About this session

Thursday, 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Environmental exposures, stress and metabolic pathways during pregnancy: An integrative approach to understand offspring health

This symposium highlights the work of early-career women investigators studying how environmental exposures and stress-related experiences during pregnancy interact with metabolic processes to influence offspring health. The interplay between stress, environmental exposures, and metabolic pathways during the sensitive period of pregnancy are particularly important for the development of the fetus and has consequences for later development. The first two presentations focus on how stress and mental health indicators during pregnancy affect fetal development. The first discusses the impact of pre-pregnancy obesity or overweight on infant cord blood omega-3 levels, moderated by prenatal depression symptoms. The second explores the association between elevated cortisol levels and iron deficiency in infant cord blood among a racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse cohort. The next two talks broaden the discussion to prenatal biological stress and metal exposures and their long-term consequences for offspring. The third presentation examines how prenatal allostatic load, incorporating metabolic, cardiovascular, immune, and anthropometric measures, predicts fat adiposity at birth, 6 months, and 5 years. The final talk investigates the interaction between prenatal heavy metal exposure and postnatal socioeconomic status in predicting allostatic load among adolescents in Mexico, 13 years later. Collectively, these presentations align with SRCD’s Integrative Developmental Science theme, utilizing multiple levels of analysis—biological processes, nutrition, and environment—to emphasize the importance of examining the interplay between stress, environmental exposures, and metabolic pathways early in life. This integrated approach offers critical insights into the intergenerational transmission of health, particularly for marginalized populations in the U.S. and globally.

Paper #1
Title	Pre-pregnancy overweight or obesity moderates the association between prenatal maternal depressive symptoms and infant outcomes
Presenting author	Lauren Costello, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, United States

Paper #2
Title	Developmental science and nutrition: Pregnancy cortisol associated with infant iron status in diverse US cohort
Presenting author	Dr. Brie M. Reid, Northeastern University, United States

Paper #3
Title	Maternal allostatic load in pregnancy is prospectively associated with child adiposity and metabolic function
Presenting author	Lauren E. Gyllenhammer, University of California, Irvine, United States

Paper #4
Title	Interactive associations between prenatal metals and childhood socioeconomic status on adolescent allostatic load
Presenting author	Dr. Olivia M. Halabicky, Ph.D., University of Michigan, United States

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Session chair
Özlü Aran, University of Denver, United States

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