Maternal Stress During Pregnancy Could Influence the Biological Clock for Aging

Summary: According to researchers, the children of mothers who faced increased stress during pregnancy had shorter telomeres.

Source: Springer.

Largest study to date on how telomere length of newborns are affected by external factors.

The stress that some mothers experience during their pregnancies could influence the genetic makeup their babies are born with and, eventually, lead to premature biological ageing and associated age-related diseases. This is according to lead authors Tabea Send and Stephanie Witt of the Central Institute of Mental Health, University of Heidelberg in Germany. The study is published in in Springer Nature’s journal Neuropsychopharmacology and focuses on a person’s DNA sequences called telomeres, which are essential for cellular replication.

Telomeres help to maintain the integrity of chromosomes, and consist of repeated DNA-sequences that cap and protect eukaryotic chromosomes. Telomeres shorten with each cell division, and eventually reach a critical length. This in turn leads to cellular death, or so-called senescence or apoptosis. Because telomeres shorten substantially as people grow older, researchers use telomere length (TL) as a biological indicator or biomarker of aging. TL at birth is therefore an indicator of biological ageing and associated age-related diseases.

Determining factors that could affect TL in newborns have become an important research endeavour. Environmental influences such as ultraviolet radiation and oxidative stress have already been shown to play a role in telomere length, while people with somatic and psychiatric disorders, including major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, have been found to have shorter TL. A few smaller studies have also established a possible link between TL and the amount and type of stress that mothers experience during pregnancy.

The current study by Send and her colleagues measured TL in 319 newborns and 318 mothers, most of whom were of Caucasian decent, at three obstetric clinics in the Rhine-Neckar region of Germany. It included interviews and questionnaires involving the mothers on their lifestyle habits, the amount of stress they believe they had to cope with, whether they suffered from any psychological disorders and also on aspects of the father. Saliva samples were collected from the mothers and umbilical cord blood immediately after the babies’ delivery to do genetic analyses.

Image shows a pregnant woman.
The children of mothers who had experienced increased psychosocial stress during pregnancy were found to have shorter telomeres. NeuroscienceNews.com image is for illustrative purposes only.

The children of mothers who had experienced increased psychosocial stress during pregnancy were found to have shorter telomeres. However, the TL in babies of mothers who had been suffering from psychological disorders over the course of their lifetime was not found to be affected. Interestingly, experiencing stress during pregnancy had no influence on a mothers’ own TL, but a lifetime psychological disorder did result in reduced TL in mothers.

Girls were also found to have significantly longer telomeres than boys. This finding supports previous evidence that TL differs between genders at birth. Whether a mother smoked or not during pregnancy influenced her own TL but not that of her offspring.

“Although the meaning of the reported differences in TL for later health is so far unclear, our findings underline the necessity to especially support women with increased risk of experiencing stress during pregnancy,” emphasizes Send.

About this neuroscience research article

Funding: German Research Foundation, British Heart Foundation, GermanFederal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) funded this study.

Source: Elizabeth Hawkins – Springer
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.
Original Research: Abstract for “Telomere Length in Newborns is Related to Maternal Stress During Pregnancy” by T Send, M Gilles, V Codd, I A C Wolf, S Bardtke, F Streit, J Strohmaier, J Frank, D Schendel, M W Sütterlin, M Denniff, M Laucht, N J Samani, M Deuschle, M Rietschel & S H Witt in Neuropsychopharmacology. Published online April 11 2017 doi:10.1038/npp.2017.73

Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article

[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]Springer “Maternal Stress During Pregnancy Could Influence the Biological Clock for Aging.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 11 April 2017.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/stress-pregnancy-aging-6389/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]Springer (2017, April 11). Maternal Stress During Pregnancy Could Influence the Biological Clock for Aging. NeuroscienceNew. Retrieved April 11, 2017 from https://neurosciencenews.com/stress-pregnancy-aging-6389/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]Springer “Maternal Stress During Pregnancy Could Influence the Biological Clock for Aging.” https://neurosciencenews.com/stress-pregnancy-aging-6389/ (accessed April 11, 2017).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]


Abstract

Telomere Length in Newborns is Related to Maternal Stress During Pregnancy

Telomere length (TL) is a marker of biological aging, and numerous studies have shown associations between TL and somatic or psychiatric disorders. Research also indicates an association between maternal stress during pregnancy and TL in the offspring. The present study investigated possible associations between TL and: (1) maternal perceived stress during pregnancy; (2) a maternal life-time history of psychiatric disorder (life-time PD); and (3) paternal age. TL was analysed in 319 newborns and 318 mothers from a predominantly Caucasian sample (n=273 Caucasian newborns and n=274 Causasian mothers). Two key findings were observed. First, maternal perceived stress during pregnancy was associated with shorter telomeres in newborns but not with maternal TL. Second, maternal life-time PD was associated with shorter maternal telomeres, but not with TL in newborns. Paternal age was not associated with TL in newborns. The finding that maternal stress during pregnancy is associated with shorter telomeres in newborns supports the results of smaller previous studies. The fact that a relation between maternal prenatal stress and TL was observed in offspring but not in mothers may be attributable to a high vulnerability to stress during intrauterine development of a maturing organism. To our knowledge, this is the largest study to date to show that maternal stress during pregnancy but not maternal life-time PD is associated with shorter telomeres in the offspring.

“Telomere Length in Newborns is Related to Maternal Stress During Pregnancy” by T Send, M Gilles, V Codd, I A C Wolf, S Bardtke, F Streit, J Strohmaier, J Frank, D Schendel, M W Sütterlin, M Denniff, M Laucht, N J Samani, M Deuschle, M Rietschel & S H Witt in Neuropsychopharmacology. Published online April 11 2017 doi:10.1038/npp.2017.73

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