SynthesisScientific reports2018
Impact of prenatal stress on offspring glucocorticoid levels: A phylogenetic meta-analysis across 14 vertebrate species.
Synthesis in Scientific reports, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 73 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prenatal stress and externalizing behaviors in childhood and adolescence: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychological bulletin · 2024Pooled it
- Prenatal Stress Induces Changes in Behavior, HPA Axis, Inflammation, and Oxidative Stress in Adult Rats Offspring.Neurochemical research · 2026Article
- Article
- Body Size and Risk of Death During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in Alaska.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- Social isolation during pregnancy disrupts maternal behavior and hippocampal neurochemistry in rats: A role for BDNF, corticosterone, and GABAARα1.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- Early prenatal but not postnatal glucocorticoid exposure is associated with enhanced HPA axis activity into adulthood in a wild primate.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Prenatal Stress and Maternal Role in Neurodevelopment.Annual review of developmental psychology · 2024Article
- A conceptual framework for understanding stress-induced physiological and transgenerational effects on population responses to climate change.Evolution letters · 2024Article
- From maternal glucocorticoid and thyroid hormones to epigenetic regulation of offspring gene expression: An experimental study in a wild bird species.Evolutionary applications · 2023Article
- The Interaction between Psychological Stress and Iron Status on Early-Life Neurodevelopmental Outcomes.Nutrients · 2023Review
- A short pre-conception bout of predation risk affects both children and grandchildren.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Maternal racism experience and cultural identity in relation to offspring telomere length.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Prenatal programming of environmental sensitivity.Translational psychiatry · 2023Review
- UrinaryMetabolites · 2023Article
- Psychological legacies of intergenerational trauma under South African apartheid: Prenatal stress predicts greater vulnerability to the psychological impacts of future stress exposure during late adolescence and early adulthood in Soweto, South Africa.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2023Article
- Perinatal and early childhood biomarkers of psychosocial stress and adverse experiences.Pediatric research · 2022Review
- Maternal stress and the maternal microbiome have sex-specific effects on offspring development and aggressive behavior in Siberian hamsters (Phodopus sungorus).Hormones and behavior · 2022Article
- Specialised minds: extending adaptive explanations of personality to the evolution of psychopathology.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Review
- Developmental Stressors Induce Innate Immune Memory in Microglia and Contribute to Disease Risk.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- Viviparous mothers impose stronger glucocorticoid-mediated maternal stress effects on their offspring than oviparous mothers.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Prenatal exposure to maternal stress is commonly associated with variation in Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal (HPA)-axis functioning in offspring. However, the strength or consistency of this response has never been empirically evaluated across vertebrate species. Here we meta-analyzed 114 results from 39 studies across 14 vertebrate species using Bayesian phylogenetic mixed-effects models. We found a positive overall effect of prenatal stress on offspring glucocorticoids (d' = 0.43) though the 95% Highest Posterior Density Interval overlapped with 0 (-0.16-0.95). Meta-regressions of potential moderators highlighted that phylogeny and life history variables predicted relatively little variation in effect size. Experimental studies (d' = 0.64) produced stronger effects than observational ones (d' = -0.01), while prenatal stress affected glucocorticoid recovery following offspring stress exposure more strongly (d' = 0.75) than baseline levels (d' = 0.48) or glucocorticoid peak response (d' = 0.36). These findings are consistent with the argument that HPA-axis sensitivity to prenatal stress is evolutionarily ancient and occurs regardless of a species' overall life history strategy. These effects may therefore be especially important for mediating intra-specific life-history variation. In addition, these findings suggest that animal models of prenatal HPA-axis programming may be appropriate for studying similar effects in humans.
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Registered trials
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.