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No evidence for association between late pregnancy maternal cortisol and gray matter volume in a healthy community sample of young adolescents

A compelling amount of animal and human research has shown that perceived maternal stress during pregnancy can affect the neurodevelopment of the offspring. Prenatal maternal cortisol is frequently proposed as the biological key mechanism underlying this link; however, literature that investigates t...

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Autores principales: Tyborowska, Anna, Gruber, Katharina, Beijers, Roseriet, Kühn, Simone, Roelofs, Karin, de Weerth, Carolina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9470950/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36117621
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.893847
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author Tyborowska, Anna
Gruber, Katharina
Beijers, Roseriet
Kühn, Simone
Roelofs, Karin
de Weerth, Carolina
author_facet Tyborowska, Anna
Gruber, Katharina
Beijers, Roseriet
Kühn, Simone
Roelofs, Karin
de Weerth, Carolina
author_sort Tyborowska, Anna
collection PubMed
description A compelling amount of animal and human research has shown that perceived maternal stress during pregnancy can affect the neurodevelopment of the offspring. Prenatal maternal cortisol is frequently proposed as the biological key mechanism underlying this link; however, literature that investigates the effects of prenatal cortisol on subsequent neurodevelopment in humans is scarce. By using longitudinal data from a relatively large community sample of mother–child dyads (N = 73), this pre-registered study prospectively examined the role of maternal prenatal cortisol concentrations on subsequent individual differences in gray matter volume (GMV) and hippocampal subfield volumes at the onset of puberty of the offspring (12 years of age). Two markers of cortisol, that is, evening cortisol and circadian decline over the day, were used as indicators of maternal physiological stress during the last trimester of pregnancy. The results indicate that prenatal maternal cortisol levels were not associated with GMV or hippocampal subfield volumes of the children. These findings suggest that late pregnancy maternal cortisol may not be related to the structural development of the offspring’s brain, at least not in healthy community samples and at the onset of puberty. When examining the influence of prenatal stress on offspring neurodevelopment, future investigations should delineate gestational timing effects of the cortisol exposure, cortisol assessment method, and impact of additional biomarkers, as these were not investigated in this study.
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spelling pubmed-94709502022-09-15 No evidence for association between late pregnancy maternal cortisol and gray matter volume in a healthy community sample of young adolescents Tyborowska, Anna Gruber, Katharina Beijers, Roseriet Kühn, Simone Roelofs, Karin de Weerth, Carolina Front Neurosci Neuroscience A compelling amount of animal and human research has shown that perceived maternal stress during pregnancy can affect the neurodevelopment of the offspring. Prenatal maternal cortisol is frequently proposed as the biological key mechanism underlying this link; however, literature that investigates the effects of prenatal cortisol on subsequent neurodevelopment in humans is scarce. By using longitudinal data from a relatively large community sample of mother–child dyads (N = 73), this pre-registered study prospectively examined the role of maternal prenatal cortisol concentrations on subsequent individual differences in gray matter volume (GMV) and hippocampal subfield volumes at the onset of puberty of the offspring (12 years of age). Two markers of cortisol, that is, evening cortisol and circadian decline over the day, were used as indicators of maternal physiological stress during the last trimester of pregnancy. The results indicate that prenatal maternal cortisol levels were not associated with GMV or hippocampal subfield volumes of the children. These findings suggest that late pregnancy maternal cortisol may not be related to the structural development of the offspring’s brain, at least not in healthy community samples and at the onset of puberty. When examining the influence of prenatal stress on offspring neurodevelopment, future investigations should delineate gestational timing effects of the cortisol exposure, cortisol assessment method, and impact of additional biomarkers, as these were not investigated in this study. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-08-31 /pmc/articles/PMC9470950/ /pubmed/36117621 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.893847 Text en Copyright © 2022 Tyborowska, Gruber, Beijers, Kühn, Roelofs and de Weerth. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Tyborowska, Anna
Gruber, Katharina
Beijers, Roseriet
Kühn, Simone
Roelofs, Karin
de Weerth, Carolina
No evidence for association between late pregnancy maternal cortisol and gray matter volume in a healthy community sample of young adolescents
title No evidence for association between late pregnancy maternal cortisol and gray matter volume in a healthy community sample of young adolescents
title_full No evidence for association between late pregnancy maternal cortisol and gray matter volume in a healthy community sample of young adolescents
title_fullStr No evidence for association between late pregnancy maternal cortisol and gray matter volume in a healthy community sample of young adolescents
title_full_unstemmed No evidence for association between late pregnancy maternal cortisol and gray matter volume in a healthy community sample of young adolescents
title_short No evidence for association between late pregnancy maternal cortisol and gray matter volume in a healthy community sample of young adolescents
title_sort no evidence for association between late pregnancy maternal cortisol and gray matter volume in a healthy community sample of young adolescents
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9470950/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36117621
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.893847
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