Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, EH8 9JZ, Edinburgh, UK.
Laboratory for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Centre for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems, Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, Italy.
BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. 2022 Nov 17;22(1):848. doi: 10.1186/s12884-022-05188-8.
Maternal prenatal infections have been linked to children's neurodevelopment and cognitive outcomes. It remains unclear, however, whether infections occurring during specific vulnerable gestational periods can affect children's cognitive outcomes. The study aimed to examine maternal infections in each trimester of pregnancy and associations with children's developmental and intelligence quotients. The ALSPAC birth cohort was used to investigate associations between maternal infections in pregnancy and child cognitive outcomes.
Infection data from mothers and cognition data from children were included with the final study sample size comprising 7,410 mother-child participants. Regression analysis was used to examine links between maternal infections occurring at each trimester of pregnancy and children's cognition at 18 months, 4 years, and 8 years.
Infections in the third trimester were significantly associated with decreased verbal IQ at age 4 (p < .05, adjusted R = 0.004); decreased verbal IQ (p < .01, adjusted R = 0.001), performance IQ (p < .01, adjusted R = 0.0008), and total IQ at age 8 (p < .01, adjusted R = 0.001).
Results suggest that maternal infections in the third trimester could have a latent effect on cognitive development, only emerging when cognitive load increases over time, though magnitude of effect appears to be small. Performance IQ may be more vulnerable to trimester-specific exposure to maternal infection as compared to verbal IQ. Future research could include examining potential mediating mechanisms on childhood cognition, such as possible moderating effects of early childhood environmental factors, and if effects persist in future cognitive outcomes.
母体产前感染与儿童的神经发育和认知结果有关。然而，目前尚不清楚在特定易感染妊娠期间发生的感染是否会影响儿童的认知结果。本研究旨在检查妊娠各期的母体感染情况，并研究其与儿童发育和智商的关系。使用 ALSPAC 出生队列研究妊娠期间母体感染与儿童认知结果之间的关系。
纳入了来自母亲的感染数据和来自儿童的认知数据，最终研究样本量包括 7410 对母婴参与者。回归分析用于检查妊娠各期母体感染与儿童 18 个月、4 岁和 8 岁时认知之间的关系。
第三孕期的感染与 4 岁时言语智商下降显著相关（p<0.05，调整后的 R=0.004）；言语智商（p<0.01，调整后的 R=0.001）、表现智商（p<0.01，调整后的 R=0.0008）和 8 岁时的总智商下降（p<0.01，调整后的 R=0.001）。
结果表明，妊娠晚期的母体感染可能对认知发育产生潜在影响，只有随着时间的推移认知负荷增加时才会显现出来，尽管影响的幅度似乎很小。与言语智商相比，表现智商可能更容易受到妊娠特定时期母体感染的影响。未来的研究可以包括检查儿童认知的潜在中介机制，例如早期儿童环境因素的可能调节作用，以及这些影响是否在未来的认知结果中持续存在。
