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Panel information
Panel 3. Biological Processes: Psychophysiology

Abstract

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Cortisol, a biomarker that reflects stress reactivity (Adam et al., 2017), is related to infant developmental outcomes concurrently and longitudinally (Figueiredo et al., 2020; Rattaz et al., 2022). According to the Development Origins of Health and Disease perspective, maternal perceived stress during pregnancy activates the maternal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which then affects the fetal and infant HPA axis and cortisol secretion (Barker, 2012; Gluckman et al., 2016; Howland et al., 2017). However, empirical findings about the associations between women’s prenatal reports of stress and infant cortisol reactivity are mixed. For example, maternal reports of stress during pregnancy did not predict salivary cortisol reactivity in 9-month-old infants (de Weerth et al., 2013), and for 3-month-old female infants higher prenatal stress predicted blunted salivary cortisol reactivity (Giesbrecht et al., 2017). Moreover, women’s prenatal stress is most often treated as a composite of multiple stressors, but some evidence suggests only specific stressors (e.g., pregnancy-related worry [Tollenaar et al., 2011]) predict infant cortisol reactivity. Thus, we examine the extent to which specific stressful life events during pregnancy predict infant cortisol reactivity at 2 months.
During their third trimester of pregnancy, women (N = 299, Mage = 29.7, SD = 5.48) reported whether or not 47 specific stressors drawn from Bergman et al., 2007 and Proulx et al., 2009 occurred and the extent to which it affected them (1 = affected me a little, 2 = affected me a lot) resulting in a 3-point final score for each item (0,1,2). Five infant salivary cortisol samples were collected at 2 months during a laboratory or home visit that included several stressful activities (undressing, measuring, and weighing the infant, placing electrodes, and the Still Face Procedure). Area under the curve with respect to ground (AUCg) was calculated to reflect infant cortisol output or reactivity during the visit (Pruessner et al., 2003). Women’s prenatal substance use, income-to-needs ratio, time since last fed, number of available cortisol samples, and duration of feeding during the 2-month visit correlated significantly with infant cortisol reactivity and were controlled. Partial correlations were estimated between each stressor and infant cortisol. The Benjamini-Hochberg procedure was used to adjust p values to reduce the false discovery rate.
Seven of the 43 stressful life events were significantly correlated with infant cortisol levels at 2 months but only 4 remained significant after the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure (Table 1). Specifically, women who had a serious accident or illness, mental illness, and trauma (self or partner) and perceived those events as impactful were more likely to have infants with higher cortisol reactivity. Follow-up analyses demonstrated that infant sex did not moderate associations between stressors and cortisol. Generally, the findings suggest that more acute and non-normative stressors (as opposed to stressors such as moved, got married, started a job) are more relevant to infants’ developing HPA system. Replication is warranted.

Author information

Author	Role
Yu Chen, M.Ed., University of North Carolina at Greensboro	Presenting author
Esther Leerkes, University of North Carolina at Greensboro	Non-presenting author
Cheryl Buehler, University of North Carolina at Greensboro	Non-presenting author
Laurie Gold, University of North Carolina at Greensboro	Non-presenting author
Lenka Shriver, University of North Carolina at Greensboro	Non-presenting author

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