ArticleBehavioural brain research2019
Prenatal stress disrupts social behavior, cortical neurobiology and commensal microbes in adult male offspring.
Article in Behavioural brain research, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 71 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
71 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 125 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prenatal Maternal Stress and Infant Gut Microbiome in Human and Animal Studies: A Comprehensive Systematic Review.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Pooled it
- Maternal Prenatal Stress and the Offspring Gut Microbiome: A Cross-Species Systematic Review.Developmental psychobiology · 2025Pooled it
- Article
- Prenatal stress reprograms placental signaling and opposes maternal immune activation effects in the fetal brain.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Prenatal Stress, Enteric Nervous System Development, and the Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis: A Hypothesis-Generating Framework for Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Fibromyalgia.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Effects of combined prenatal exposure to air pollution and maternal stress on social behavior and oxytocin and vasopressin systems in male and female mice.Journal of neuroendocrinology · 2026Article
- Maternal depression and offspring neurodevelopmental impairments in wild rodents induced by ecologically relevant prenatal stress.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Effects of combined prenatal exposure to air pollution and maternal stress on immune and dopaminergic gene expression in the gut-brain axis.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2026Article
- Abnormal intestinal microbial colonization in prenatally stressed offspring is related to lung and intestinal cytokine expression.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Prenatal stress shapes discrete responses during early recovery from repeated adult stress.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2026Article
- Impact of Sex, Gonadectomy, and Repeated Restraint Stress on Gut Microbiome in Mice.Molecular neurobiology · 2025Article
- Peripartum sertraline impacts maternal neurobehavioral and neurodegenerative mechanisms in pregnant and postpartum mice.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Effects of combined prenatal exposure to air pollution and maternal stress on social behavior and oxytocin and vasopressin systems in male and female mice.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Prenatal Stress Rewires the Gut-Brain Axis: Long-Term, Sex-Specific Effects on Microbiota, Intestinal Barrier, and Hippocampal Inflammation.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Autism Spectrum Disorder: From Experimental Models to Probiotic Application with a Special Focus onNutrients · 2025Review
- Interactions of the maternal microbiome with diet, stress, and infection influence fetal development.The FEBS journal · 2025Review
- I "Gut" Rhythm: the microbiota as a modulator of the stress response and circadian rhythms.The FEBS journal · 2025Review
- The microbiome as a modulator of neurological health across the maternal-offspring interface.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2025Review
- Critical Review of the Cross-Links Between Dietary Components, the Gut Microbiome, and Depression.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- The impact of perinatal maternal stress on the maternal and infant gut and human milk microbiomes: A scoping review.PloS one · 2025Article
11 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
In utero and early neonatal exposure to maternal stress is linked with psychiatric disorders, and the underlying mechanisms are currently being elucidated. We used a prenatal stressor in pregnant mice to examine novel relationships between prenatal stress exposure, changes in the gut microbiome, and social behavior. Here, we show that males exposed to prenatal stress had a significant reduction in social behavior in adulthood, with increased corticosterone release following social interaction. Male offspring exposed to prenatal stress also had neuroinflammation, decreased oxytocin receptor, and decreased serotonin metabolism in their cortex in adulthood, which are linked to decreased social behavior. Finally, we found a significant difference in commensal microbes, including decreases in Bacteroides and Parabacteroides, in adult male offspring exposed to prenatal stress when compared to non-stressed controls. Our findings indicate that gestation is a critical window where maternal stress contributes to the development of aberrant social behaviors and alterations in cortical neurobiology, and that prenatal stress is sufficient to disrupt the male gut-brain axis into adulthood.
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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.