ArticleBrain, behavior, and immunity2019
Sex-specific association between prenatal life stress exposure and infant pro-inflammatory cytokine levels during acute respiratory infection.
Article in Brain, behavior, and immunity, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 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
4 citing papers in PubMed, 6 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sex Differences in Asthma Pathogenesis.Immunological reviews · 2026Review
- Abnormal intestinal microbial colonization in prenatally stressed offspring is related to lung and intestinal cytokine expression.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Association between prenatal ambient particulate matter and childhood asthma is modified by community safety and child sex.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Stress and Nasal Allergy: Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone Stimulates Mast Cell Degranulation and Proliferation in Human Nasal Mucosa.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPrenatal life stress exposure is linked to dysregulated immune function and chronic inflammatory disease in offspring, but we know little about its effects on infant immune response during viral infection.
methodTo address this issue, we examined associations between prenatal life stress exposure and infant upper-airway inflammatory markers during acute respiratory infection (ARI) using data from a prospective, population-based birth-cohort study (N = 180). Infant inflammation was measured as a continuous latent factor within a structural equation modeling framework using nasal wash concentrations of interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, and tumor necrosis factor-α. We hypothesized that infants exposed to prenatal life stress would have greater levels of nasal inflammation during ARI and increased risk for ARI-related morbidity in early childhood.
resultsOur findings contradicted these hypotheses and provided evidence of sexually dimorphic effects of prenatal stress exposure on infant immune functioning during ARI. Among boys, but not girls, prenatal stress was negatively associated with nasal inflammation and indirectly associated with both lower ARI severity and reduced likelihood of subsequent ARI-related hospitalization in the 2nd and 3rd years of life.
conclusionThese data suggest that prenatal stress exposure may be beneficial for infant boys in the context of respiratory viral infections; however, it will be critical to determine if these benefits are offset by increased risk for chronic inflammatory diseases in later childhood. As the participants in this cohort are being followed longitudinally through age 8, we will be able to evaluate long-term health outcomes in future studies.
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