ArticleBrain, behavior, and immunity2023
Maternal early life stress is associated with pro-inflammatory processes during pregnancy.
Article in Brain, behavior, and immunity, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 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
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prenatal psychological distress and neurodevelopmental trajectories in the first 3 years: a systematic review.BMJ open · 2025Pooled it
- Prenatal road traffic noise impairs early testicular development in Sprague-Dawley offspring: pharmacological rescue by melatonin and edaravone; developmental preservation by environmental enrichment.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Article
- Inflammatory Stress Response During Pregnancy as a Connecting Link in Intergenerational Risk Cascades.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Article
- Developmental origins of immune function: Maternal prenatal mood is associated with infant immune cell gene expression.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2026Article
- Association of prenatal parabens exposure with adverse pregnancy outcomes: the role of prenatal depressive symptoms.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Maternal stressors disrupt mouse placental proteome and fetal brain development in a sex-specific fashion through inflammation and oxidative stress.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Investigating psychosocial factors and systemic inflammation using dried blood spots: a scoping review.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2025Article
- Prenatal inflammation and trauma symptoms in Latina mothers: The role of discrimination and growing up in an ethnic minoritized context.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2025Article
- A Brief Historic Review of Research on Early Life Stress and Inflammation across the Lifespan.Neuroimmunomodulation · 2025Review
- Estimating the associations between women's maltreatment in childhood and inflammatory biomarker levels prior to and during pregnancy.PloS one · 2025Article
- Perinatal inflammation, fetal growth restriction, and long-term neurodevelopmental impairment in Bangladesh.Pediatric research · 2024Article
- Parental Preconception Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Maternal Prenatal Inflammation Prospectively Predict Shorter Telomere Length in Children.Psychosomatic medicine · 2024Article
- Early exposure to maternal stress and risk for atopic dermatitis in children: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Clinical and translational allergy · 2024Review
- Examining implications of the developmental timing of maternal trauma for prenatal and newborn outcomes.Infant behavior & development · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Early life stress (ELS) is common in the United States and worldwide, and contributes to the development of psychopathology in individuals with these experiences and their offspring. A growing body of research suggests that early life stress may contribute to adverse health partly through modulation of immune (and particularly inflammatory) responses. Therefore, increased maternal prenatal inflammation has been proposed as a mechanistic pathway by which the observed cross-generational effects of parental early life stress on child neuropsychiatric outcomes may be exerted. We examined associations between early life stress and molecular markers of inflammation (specifically pro-inflammatory gene expression and receptor-mediated transcription factor activity) and a commonly studied circulating marker of inflammation (C-Reactive Protein) in a diverse group of women in or near their third trimester of pregnancy, covarying for age, race/ethnicity, BMI, concurrent infection, concurrent perceived stress, and per capita household income. Mothers who experienced higher levels of early life stress had significantly increased pro-inflammatory (NF-κB) and decreased anti-viral (IRF) transcription factor activity. Transcripts that were up or down regulated in mothers with high ELS were preferentially derived from both CD16+ and CD16- monocytes. Early life stress was not associated with elevated CRP. Taken together, these findings provide preliminary evidence for an association between ELS and a pro-inflammatory transcriptional phenotype during pregnancy that may serve as a mechanistic pathway for cross-generational transmission of the effects of early life stress on mental and physical health.
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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.