ArticlePsychoneuroendocrinology2020
Prenatal maternal stress prospectively relates to shorter child buccal cell telomere length.
Article in Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 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
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Impact of Maternal Lifetime Stress on Offspring Biological Aging: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Pooled it
- Families Implementing Resilient Systems Together (FIRST).Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- A lifespan approach to biological aging: Early adversity, past-year trauma, and telomere length in women.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- Correlational Insights into Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Lebanon.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Prenatal stress and gestational epigenetic age: No evidence of associations based on a large prospective multi-cohort study.Research square · 2024Article
- Parental Preconception Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Maternal Prenatal Inflammation Prospectively Predict Shorter Telomere Length in Children.Psychosomatic medicine · 2024Article
- Major Stressful Life Events and the Risk of Pancreatic, Head and Neck Cancers: A Case-Control Study.Cancers · 2024Article
- Early origins of health and disease risk: The case for investigating adverse exposures and biological aging in utero, across childhood, and into adolescence.Child development perspectives · 2023Article
- Associations Between Early Life Adversity and Youth Psychobiological Outcomes: Dimensional and Person-Centered Approaches.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2023Article
- Intergenerational effects of maternal lifetime stressor exposure on offspring telomere length in Black and White women.Psychological medicine · 2023Article
- Article
- The interaction of socioeconomic stress and race on telomere length in children: A systematic review and meta-analysis.SSM - population health · 2023Article
- Cancer-related accelerated ageing and biobehavioural modifiers: a framework for research and clinical care.Nature reviews. Clinical oncology · 2022Review
- Prenatal exposure to maternal psychological distress and telomere length in childhood.Developmental psychobiology · 2022Article
- Telomere Length and Preterm Birth in Pregnant Mexican-Origin Women.Maternal and child health journal · 2021Article
- Psychobiology of Stress and Adolescent Depression (PSY SAD) Study: Protocol overview for an fMRI-based multi-method investigation.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2021Article
- Maternal psychosocial functioning, obstetric health history, and newborn telomere length.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 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
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Prenatal exposure to stress increases risk for suboptimal child and adult mental and physical health outcomes, hypothesized to occur via fetal exposure to maternal stress hormones that alter growth and development. One proposed pathway through which stress exposure in utero could affect the offspring is by accelerating cellular aging in the form of telomere attrition. We tested this hypothesis in a cohort of 111 mother-child dyads, where mothers were assessed over 6 or more years, beginning prior to conception, and later during pregnancy, postpartum, and when the children were 3-5 years old. Adjusting for child age and concurrent maternal stress, we found that higher maternal perceived stress in the 3rd trimesters of pregnancy was predictive of shorter child buccal telomere length (bTL) (β = -0.24, p < .05), while maternal preconception and postpartum maternal stress were not associated with bTL (all p's > 0.42). These findings suggest a vulnerable time period in pregnancy when maternal stress influences offspring telomere length, suggesting the early embedding of adult disease might occur through biological aging pathways.
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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.