ArticleTranslational psychiatry2023
Effects of prenatal exposure to (es)citalopram and maternal depression during pregnancy on DNA methylation and child neurodevelopment.
Article in Translational psychiatry, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Association of parental prenatal mental health with offspring neurodevelopmental disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychological medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Epigenome-wide association studies of prenatal maternal mental health and infant epigenetic profiles: a systematic review.Translational psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Prenatal exposure to maternal depression and antidepressants and neurodevelopmental outcomes: A population cohort study.PLoS medicine · 2026Article
- Epigenetic dysregulation in depression: molecular mechanisms, clinical biomarkers, and therapeutic opportunities.Journal of translational medicine · 2026Review
- Metabolomic signatures of SSRI exposure during neural differentiation and correlation of lysophosphatidylcholines with early symptoms of neurodevelopmental disorders.EBioMedicine · 2026Article
- Maternal antenatal depression and offspring DNA methylation.Journal of affective disorders · 2026Article
- Differential Metabolic Changes in Zebrafish Embryos Are Induced by Discontinued Citalopram Exposure.Biomedicines · 2026Article
- Citalopram exposure of hESCs during neuronal differentiation identifies dysregulated genes involved in neurodevelopment and depression.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Studies assessing associations between prenatal exposure to antidepressants, maternal depression, and offspring DNA methylation (DNAm) have been inconsistent. Here, we investigated whether prenatal exposure to citalopram or escitalopram ((es)citalopram) and maternal depression is associated with differences in DNAm. Then, we examined if there is an interaction effect of (es)citalopram exposure and DNAm on offspring neurodevelopmental outcomes. Finally, we investigated whether DNAm at birth correlates with neurodevelopmental trajectories in childhood. We analyzed DNAm in cord blood from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) biobank. MoBa contains questionnaire data on maternal (es)citalopram use and depression during pregnancy and information about child neurodevelopmental outcomes assessed by internationally recognized psychometric tests. In addition, we retrieved ADHD diagnoses from the Norwegian Patient Registry and information on pregnancies from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway. In total, 958 newborn cord blood samples were divided into three groups: (1) prenatal (es)citalopram exposed (n = 306), (2) prenatal maternal depression exposed (n = 308), and (3) propensity score-selected controls (n = 344). Among children exposed to (es)citalopram, there were more ADHD diagnoses and symptoms and delayed communication and psychomotor development. We did not identify differential DNAm associated with (es)citalopram or depression, nor any interaction effects on neurodevelopmental outcomes throughout childhood. Trajectory modeling identified subgroups of children following similar developmental patterns. Some of these subgroups were enriched for children exposed to maternal depression, and some subgroups were associated with differences in DNAm at birth. Interestingly, several of the differentially methylated genes are involved in neuronal processes and development. These results suggest DNAm as a potential predictive molecular marker of later abnormal neurodevelopmental outcomes, but we cannot conclude whether DNAm links prenatal (es)citalopram exposure or maternal depression with child neurodevelopmental outcomes.
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