Prenatal Cortisol Exposure Predicts Infant Cortisol Response to Acute Stress

Overview

Journal Dev Psychobiol

Specialties Pediatrics
Psychiatry
Psychology

Date 2012 Feb 9

PMID 22315044

Citations 59

Authors

Thomas G OConnor

Kristin Bergman

Pampa Sarkar

Vivette Glover

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Experimental animal findings suggest that early stress and glucocorticoid exposure may program the function of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in the offspring. The extension of these findings to human development is not yet clear. A prospective longitudinal study was conducted on 125 mothers and their normally developing children. Amniotic fluid was obtained at, on average, 17.2 weeks gestation; infant behavior and cortisol response to a separation-reunion stress was assessed at 17 months. Amniotic fluid cortisol predicted infant cortisol response to separation-reunion stress: infants who were exposed to higher levels of cortisol in utero showed higher pre-stress cortisol values and blunted response to stress exposure. The association was independent of prenatal, obstetric, and socioeconomic factors and child-parent attachment. The findings provide some of the strongest data in humans that HPA axis functioning in the child may be predicted from prenatal cortisol exposure.

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