ArticlePhysiology & behavior2013
Prenatal exposure to stressful life events is associated with masculinized anogenital distance (AGD) in female infants.
Article in Physiology & behavior, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 69 citations in OpenAlex.
- Associations of endocrine disrupting chemicals with anogenital distance across infancy.The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism · 2026Observational
- Prenatal maternal stress is associated with alterations in the structural integrity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis 20 years later: Project Ice Storm.Human reproduction (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- Placental iron transport under maternal stress: a missing link in foetal programming and mental health.EBioMedicine · 2026Article
- Association of Prenatal Depression With Second to Fourth Digit Ratio in Children Aged 4 and 6 Years.Depression and anxiety · 2025Article
- Associations between neighborhood stress and maternal sex steroid hormones in pregnancy.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2023Article
- Effects of an App-Based Mindfulness Intervention during Pregnancy on the Infant's Prenatal Androgen Exposure: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Shorter Anogenital Distance in Women with Ovarian Endometriomas and Adenomyosis, but Not Uterine Leiomyomas.Biomedicines · 2023Article
- Prenatal paternal anxiety symptoms predict child DHEA levels and internalizing symptoms during adrenarche.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Effects of Elevated Maternal Adiposity on Offspring Reproductive Health: A Perspective From Epidemiologic Studies.Journal of the Endocrine Society · 2022Review
- Associations of maternal anthropometrics with newborn anogenital distance and the 2:4 digit ratio.Human reproduction (Oxford, England) · 2022Article
- Associations of prenatal maternal stress with measures of cognition in 7.5-month-old infants.Developmental psychobiology · 2021Article
- The effects of early life stress on motivated behaviors: A role for gonadal hormones.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2020Review
- Stress, Sex, and Sugar: Glucocorticoids and Sex-Steroid Crosstalk in the Sex-Specific Misprogramming of Metabolism.Journal of the Endocrine Society · 2020Review
- The effects of early life adversity on growth, maturation, and steroid hormones in male and female rats.The European journal of neuroscience · 2020Article
- Deciphering the DNA Methylome of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.Molecular diagnosis & therapy · 2020Review
- Comparison of Anogenital Distance and Correlation with Vulvo-vaginal Atrophy: A Pilot Study on Premenopausal and Postmenopausal Women.Journal of menopausal medicine · 2018Article
- Placental miR-340 mediates vulnerability to activity based anorexia in mice.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Sex-Specific Effects of Combined Exposure to Chemical and Non-chemical Stressors on Neuroendocrine Development: a Review of Recent Findings and Putative Mechanisms.Current environmental health reports · 2017Review
- Callous-Unemotional Traits Moderate the Relation Between Prenatal Testosterone (2D:4D) and Externalising Behaviours in Children.Child psychiatry and human development · 2017Article
- Endometriomas and deep infiltrating endometriosis in adulthood are strongly associated with anogenital distance, a biomarker for prenatal hormonal environment.Human reproduction (Oxford, England) · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
In animal models, prenatal stress programs reproductive development in the resulting offspring, however little is known about effects in humans. Anogenital distance (AGD) is a commonly used, sexually dimorphic biomarker of prenatal androgen exposure in many species. In rodents, prenatally stressed males have shorter AGD than controls (suggesting lower prenatal androgen exposure), whereas prenatally stressed females have longer AGD than controls (suggesting greater prenatal androgen exposure). Our objective was to investigate the relationship between stressful life events in pregnancy and infant AGD. In a prospective cohort study, pregnant women and their partners reported exposure to stressful life events during pregnancy. Pregnancies in which the couple reported 4+ life events were considered highly stressed. After birth (average 16.5 months), trained examiners measured AGD in the infants (137 males, 136 females). After adjusting for age, body size and other covariates, females born to couples reporting high stress had significantly longer (i.e. more masculine) AGD than females born to couples reporting low stress (p=0.015). Among males, high stress was weakly, but not significantly, associated with shorter AGD. Our results suggest prenatal stress may masculinize some aspects of female reproductive development in humans. More sensitive measures of prenatal stress and additional measures of reproductive development are needed to better understand these relationships and clarify mechanisms.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.