Department of Psychology.
Department of Psychiatry.
Health Psychol. 2020 Nov;39(11):1013-1019. doi: 10.1037/hea0001018. Epub 2020 Jul 20.
It is widely assumed that glucocorticoids represent a primary mechanism through which exposure to adversity and maternal psychological distress shape prenatal developmental trajectories of both mother and fetus. However, despite repeated investigations and the fact that prenatal cortisol has been reliably linked to developmental outcomes, the empirical evidence supporting an association between prenatal cortisol and maternal distress is scarce. In this study, a novel approach to assessing links between maternal prenatal psychological distress and gestational cortisol profiles, general growth mixture modeling (GGMM), was applied.
Measures of pregnancy anxiety, perceived stress, and state anxiety and depressive symptoms as well as plasma samples (for determination of cortisol) were collected from 250 women 4 times during pregnancy.
Using GGMM, 3 cortisol trajectory groups were identified, including a typical group ( = 199) that exhibited the expected steady increase in cortisol throughout gestation, a steep group ( = 31) displaying an accelerated increase in cortisol over the course of pregnancy relative to the typical group, and a flat group ( = 20) with relatively higher cortisol levels early in pregnancy that plateaued in midgestation. Women reporting the highest distress scores exhibited trajectories expected to be associated with the least optimal developmental outcomes (flatter trajectories characterized by relatively higher levels early in gestation and lower levels late in gestation).
These findings suggest that psychological distress during pregnancy is associated with unique prenatal cortisol profiles and support further examination of this link, to enable continued evaluation of a plausible biological pathway by which maternal psychological distress programs fetal development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
人们普遍认为，皮质醇是逆境暴露和产妇心理困扰塑造母亲和胎儿产前发育轨迹的主要机制。然而，尽管已经进行了多次研究，并且产前皮质醇与发育结果之间存在可靠关联，但支持产前皮质醇与产妇困扰之间存在关联的实证证据仍然很少。在这项研究中，采用了一种评估产妇产前心理困扰与妊娠期皮质醇曲线之间联系的新方法，即一般增长混合建模（GGMM）。
在妊娠期间，对 250 名女性采集了 4 次妊娠焦虑、感知压力、状态焦虑和抑郁症状的测量值以及血浆样本（用于测定皮质醇）。
使用 GGMM 确定了 3 个皮质醇轨迹组，包括一个典型组（n = 199），其皮质醇在整个妊娠期呈预期的稳定增长；一个陡峭组（n = 31），其皮质醇在妊娠期间的增长速度相对于典型组加快；一个扁平组（n = 20），其妊娠早期皮质醇水平较高，妊娠中期趋于平稳。报告最高困扰评分的女性表现出与最不理想的发育结果相关的预期轨迹（以妊娠早期相对较高、妊娠晚期较低为特征的较平坦轨迹）。
这些发现表明，妊娠期间的心理困扰与独特的产前皮质醇曲线有关，并支持进一步研究这种联系，以便继续评估母亲心理困扰对胎儿发育的可能生物学途径。
