Department of Psychiatry, Boston Children's Hospital, 300 Longwood Ave, Mailstop BCH 3199, Boston, MA, 02115, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Institutional Centers for Clinical and Translational Research, Boston Children's Hospital, 300 Longwood Ave, Mailstop BCH 3200, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2019 Apr;102:225-235. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.12.222. Epub 2018 Dec 17.
Newborn telomere length is a potential biomarker of the effects of maternal-fetal processes on offspring long-term health. A number of maternal psychosocial and environmental factors in pregnancy (e.g., stress, health, socioeconomic status) have been associated with shortened telomere length at birth. The physiological mechanisms responsible for potential effects of maternal factors on newborn telomere length have yet to be identified. Indirect evidence suggests that disruptions in maternal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis functioning in pregnancy may be involved. Studies are needed that test whether maternal HPA axis functioning in pregnancy is associated with newborn telomere length. This study examined whether maternal HPA axis functioning across pregnancy, reflected in hair cortisol collected within one week after delivery, predicted newborn telomere length assessed from leukocyte cord blood collected at birth among 93 sociodemographically diverse mother-infant dyads. We further tested whether associations between maternal hair cortisol and newborn telomere length differed by infant sex, given documented sex differences in prenatal environmental exposure effects on offspring health, patterns of cortisol exposure during gestation, and telomere biology across the lifespan. In a multi-group structural equation modeling analysis that accounted for cortisol exposures across trimesters, maternal cortisol levels in pregnancy were not associated with newborn telomere length in the sample as a whole. However, significant sex differences emerged, with a significant positive association among females and a lack of a significant association among males. In addition, analyses revealed that cortisol levels were higher across trimesters among mothers of male infants than mothers of female infants. The results suggest that functioning of the maternal HPA axis in pregnancy may differ by fetal sex and have sex-specific effects on newborn telomere biology. These findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms by which maternal psychosocial and environmental exposures influence newborn telomere length and for elucidating mechanisms contributing to sex disparities in health.
新生儿端粒长度是母体-胎儿过程对后代长期健康影响的潜在生物标志物。怀孕期间的许多母体心理社会和环境因素（例如压力、健康、社会经济地位）与出生时端粒长度缩短有关。负责母体因素对新生儿端粒长度潜在影响的生理机制尚未确定。间接证据表明，怀孕期间母体下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺（HPA）轴功能的中断可能与此有关。需要进行研究，以测试怀孕期间母体 HPA 轴功能是否与新生儿端粒长度有关。本研究调查了在分娩后一周内收集的头发皮质醇反映的整个怀孕期间母体 HPA 轴功能是否与从出生时采集的白细胞脐带血中评估的新生儿端粒长度有关，在 93 个社会人口统计学上多样化的母婴二联体中进行了研究。鉴于产前环境暴露对后代健康的影响、怀孕期间皮质醇暴露的模式以及整个生命周期的端粒生物学方面存在有记录的性别差异，我们进一步测试了母体头发皮质醇与新生儿端粒长度之间的关联是否因婴儿性别而异。在一个多组结构方程建模分析中，该分析考虑了整个孕期的皮质醇暴露，母体皮质醇水平在整个样本中与新生儿端粒长度无关。然而，出现了显著的性别差异，女性呈显著正相关，而男性则无显著相关性。此外，分析显示，男婴母亲的皮质醇水平在整个孕期都高于女婴母亲。结果表明，怀孕期间母体 HPA 轴的功能可能因胎儿性别而异，并对新生儿端粒生物学产生性别特异性影响。这些发现对于理解母体心理社会和环境暴露如何影响新生儿端粒长度的机制以及阐明导致健康性别差异的机制具有重要意义。
