ArticleAnnals of epidemiology2024
Association between maternal prenatal depressive symptoms and offspring epigenetic aging at 3-5 weeks.
Article in Annals of epidemiology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 5 citations in OpenAlex.
- Associations among prenatal stress, socioeconomic status, and infant epigenetic aging.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- Epigenetic Clocks Identify Harmful Epigenetic Aging Linked to Depression Severity and Cognitive Deficits in Major Depressive Disorder.Aging and disease · 2025Article
- Review
- Quantification of Epigenetic Aging in Public Health.Annual review of public health · 2025Review
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Epigenetic clocks are emerging as tools for assessing acceleration and deceleration of biological age during childhood. Maternal depression during pregnancy may affect the biological aging of offspring and related development. In a low-income cohort of mother-child dyads, we investigated the relationship between prenatal maternal depressive symptoms and infant epigenetic age residuals, which represent the deviation (acceleration or deceleration) that exists between predicted biological age and chronological age. The epigenetic age residuals were derived from a pediatric-specific buccal epithelial clock. We hypothesized that maternal depressive symptoms, both sub-clinical and elevated (clinical level), would be associated with estimated biological age deceleration in offspring during early infancy. We analyzed data from 94 mother-child dyads using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and DNA methylation derived from offspring buccal cells collected at 3-5 weeks of age. There was a significant non-linear association between the EPDS score and epigenetic age residual (β = -0.017, 95% confidence interval: -0.03,-0.01, P = <0.01). The results indicated that infants of mothers with sub-clinical depressive symptoms had the lowest infant epigenetic age residuals while infants of mothers with no-to-low depressive symptoms had the highest and experienced biological age acceleration. Maternal depressive symptoms may influence the biological aging of offspring living in poverty.
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Registered trials
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