ArticleDevelopmental psychobiology2018
Maternal depression and cortisol in pregnancy predict offspring emotional reactivity in the preschool period.
Article in Developmental psychobiology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 2 of them syntheses 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.
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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.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sleep During Pregnancy and Offspring Outcomes From Infancy to Childhood: A Systematic Review.Biopsychosocial science and medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Neonatal Hair Cortisol and Birth Outcomes: An Empirical Study and Meta-Analysis.Psychosomatic medicine · 2024Pooled it
- Prenatal stress shapes discrete responses during early recovery from repeated adult stress.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2026Article
- Anxiety and depressive disorders in the offspring of mothers with perinatal depressive disorders.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Article
- The Interplay between Maternal Depression and ADHD Symptoms in Predicting Emotional and Attentional Functioning in Toddlerhood.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2025Article
- Safety in treatment: Classical pharmacotherapeutics and new avenues for addressing maternal depression and anxiety during pregnancy.Pharmacological reviews · 2025Review
- Stress reactivity moderates the association between early experiences of unpredictability and emotional problems in adolescents.Neurobiology of stress · 2025Article
- Early life stress and iron metabolism in developmental psychoneuroimmunology.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2024Article
- Article
- The Interaction between Psychological Stress and Iron Status on Early-Life Neurodevelopmental Outcomes.Nutrients · 2023Review
- Prenatal stress and child externalizing behavior: effects of maternal perceived stress and cortisol are moderated by child sex.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2023Article
- Maternal Mental Health Care Matters: The Impact of Prenatal Depressive and Anxious Symptoms on Child Emotional and Behavioural Trajectories in the French EDEN Cohort.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Evaluating depression and anxiety throughout pregnancy and after birth: impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.American journal of obstetrics & gynecology MFM · 2022Article
- Inflammatory modulation of the associations between prenatal maternal depression and neonatal brain.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2021Article
- School-age social behavior and pragmatic language ability in children with prenatal serotonin reuptake inhibitor exposure.Development and psychopathology · 2020Article
- Prenatal Developmental Origins of Future Psychopathology: Mechanisms and Pathways.Annual review of clinical psychology · 2019Review
- Does Prenatal Maternal Distress Contribute to Sex Differences in Child Psychopathology?Current psychiatry reports · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Prenatal exposures to higher levels of maternal cortisol and depression have been linked to a variety of adverse physiological, neurological, and behavioral outcomes, such as dysregulated cortisol production, structural and functional differences in limbic areas of the brain, and greater negative emotionality. This study investigated prospective associations between maternal prepartum depression/cortisol levels and offspring emotional reactivity in 163 mother-child pairs. Women were assessed repeatedly during pregnancy, and later participated in a laboratory visit with their preschool-aged children. Mothers self-reported on depressive symptomatology during pregnancy and provided saliva samples for cortisol assay. Offspring emotional reactivity was assessed through multiple measures, including caregiver reports, cortisol response following a stressor, and laboratory observations of behavior. The findings suggest potential prenatal timing effects, with depression and maternal cortisol measured in the first and second trimesters being more strongly associated with child emotional reactivity. Sex was found to moderate associations between maternal prepartum depression/cortisol and child emotional reactivity, with the general pattern reflecting positive associations in girls, and negative associations in boys.
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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.