ArticlePlacenta2021
Maternal stress, placental 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 2, and infant HPA axis development in humans: Psychosocial and physiological pathways.
Article in Placenta, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 73 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prenatal psychological distress and neurodevelopmental trajectories in the first 3 years: a systematic review.BMJ open · 2025Pooled it
- The relationship between maternal adiposity during pregnancy and toddler ADHD symptoms is mediated by gestational inflammation.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2026Article
- Stressed, Stained, and Stored: The Impact of Maternal Distress and Smoking on Amniotic Biomarkers-A Scoping Review.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Low Pregnancy Cortisol and Infant Socioemotional Problems: The Mediating Role of Postpartum Depressive Symptoms.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Article
- Developmental Programming of Drug Response: Microbiota as a Missing Dimension in Perinatal Drug Discovery.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Prenatal parental mental health and neurodevelopment in children with congenital heart disease.Pediatric research · 2026Review
- Prenatal stress, intimate partner violence and maternal cortisol trajectories: insights from a prospective birth cohort from São Paulo, Brazil.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Glucocorticoid Receptor Signaling: Multilevel Organization, Roles in Fetal Development, and Postnatal Outcomes.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Fetal Cortisol Exposure and Offspring Socioemotional Development.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Article
- Placenta-pulmonary coupling-guided multimodal AI for fetal lung maturity staging and individualized glucocorticoid therapy.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- The roles, mechanisms, and therapeutic implications of glucocorticoids in glucose and lipid metabolism.Military Medical Research · 2026Review
- Perinatal HPA axis regulation and offspring neuropsychiatric development: mechanisms, developmental trajectories, and clinical implications.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2026Review
- Mother infant cortisol levels and maternal childhood adversity.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Maternal thyroid dysfunction and stress during pregnancy on ADHD risk in preschoolers: a retrospective study.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Article
- Coordination of inflammatory and adrenocortical stress response during pregnancy and variation by mental health.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2025Article
- The Effect of Maternal Stress on 11beta-Hydroxysteroid Dehydrogenase Activity During Pregnancy: Evidence for Potential Pregnancy Complications and Consequences on Fetal Development and Metabolism.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Cortisol as a Mediator of Prenatal Distress and Difficult Infant Temperament: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocol.Health science reports · 2025Article
- Neurodevelopmental Impact of Prenatal Stress: A Proteomic Analysis of Myelination Disruptions in the Avian Embryo.Developmental neurobiology · 2025Article
- Pinpointing the timing of prenatal stress associated with infant biobehavioral reactivity.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- The Fetal Environment and the Development of Hypertension-The Epigenetic Modification by Glucocorticoids.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
introductionPrenatal stress is known to influence fetal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) development. Placental 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 2 (HSD11B2) is a central gene in this pathway, but little is known about what influences its functioning. We assess how maternal distress influences HSD11B2 functioning, and how HSD11B2 in turn, is associated with infant HPA axis development.
methodsData come from 24 mother-infant dyads on the Galápagos Islands. Using adjusted linear regression models, we assess the effects of maternal psychosocial (stress and depressive symptoms, measured by the Perceived Stress Scale and the Patient Health Questionnaire-8, respectively) and physiological (HPA axis dysregulation) distress during pregnancy on HSD11B2 methylation and expression and then test how these HSD11B2 measures influence infant HPA axis development.
resultsMaternal HPA axis dysregulation during pregnancy is associated with lower placental HSD11B2 expression, which is associated with an exaggerated cortisol reactivity in infants. Sex-specific analyses revealed that maternal depressive symptoms may influence the functioning of placental HSD11B2 differently in girls (n = 11, 46%) than in boys (n = 13, 54%), though the sample size was small. DISCUSSION: These results support a disrupted adaptive framework, in which the ability to upregulate HSD11B2 expression in response to acute stress diminishes as maternal stress becomes chronic. In this model, chronic stress may exhaust the protective mechanism of HSD11B2, leaving the infant vulnerable to high levels of maternal cortisol, which could injure the fetal HPA axis and disrupt long-term neurobehavioral and metabolic development. While larger studies will be needed to confirm these findings, this study offers exploratory results on the effects of maternal distress on both HSD11B2 methylation and expression and the effect of HSD11B2 on offspring HPA axis development.
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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.