Original articlePrenatal Anxiety Predicts Individual Differences in Cortisol in Pre-Adolescent Children
Section snippets
Subjects
The ALSPAC is a prospective study of women, their partners, and an index child. The 14,541 enrolled pregnancies (from April 1, 1991 to December 31, 1992) represented 85%–90% of the eligible population resident in three health authorities around Bristol, United Kingdom (Golding et al 2001). Of these, 14,138 surviving children (13,995 mothers) are being followed. The average age of the women at pregnancy was 28 years and ranged from 14 to 46 years; less than 5% were younger than 20 years, and
Results
Preliminary analyses indicated that there was the usual and substantial diurnal variation in cortisol levels for each of the 3 days assessed, with close correspondence among diurnal curves for the 3 days (Figure 1). There was not a significant increase in cortisol from awakening to 30 min after awakening in the group as a whole [means (SD): 10.4 (3.2) and 10.2 (4.1), respectively; paired t test, t(69) =.38]. Stability of individual differences in cortisol values across the 3 days was moderate.
Discussion
We found that anxiety in late pregnancy was associated with individual differences in measures of cortisol in pre-adolescents. The link between prenatal anxiety and offspring HPA axis function was strongest at 32 weeks’ gestation and especially robust for awakening cortisol. These results provide the strongest evidence to date that prenatal stress is associated with longer-term impact on the HPA axis of the human offspring, a finding repeatedly demonstrated in animal investigations.
There was
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