Prenatal pregnancy-related anxiety predicts boys’ ADHD symptoms via placental C-reactive protein

Gender-Specific Associations of Pregnancy-Related Anxiety with Placental Epigenetic Patterning of Glucocorticoid Response Genes and Preschooler’s Emotional Symptoms and Hyperactivity

“…However, evidence from human studies is lacking. Our population-based perspective cohort study found that pregnancy-related anxiety at the third trimester could affect emotional symptoms only in girls and hyperactivity only in boys of preschool age, which con rms and extends our previous research [7,8]. Furthermore, only boys showed differential methylation of the FKBP5 gene in response to prenatal pregnancy-related anxiety; also, methylation of NR3C1 and HSD11B2 genes was associated with the risk of emotional symptoms and hyperactivity only in boys.…”

“…We add to the literature [39] by showing similar ndings in pregnancy-related anxiety, a special mode of prenatal stress that has received little attention but predicts fetal development outcomes more accurately than general anxiety and depression symptoms [40,41]. Compared with our two previous works [7,8], the present study found similar gender-dependent outcomes but only focused on pregnancy-related anxiety at the third trimester because this cohort data showed that the third trimester is the critical period of pregnancy-related anxiety on child neurobehavioral development [42]. However, a small sample size (n = 27) study showed that higher pregnancy-related anxiety symptoms were signi cantly associated with more emotional symptoms in boys compared to girls at 4 years old [31].…”

“…Although the cumulative contribution rate of the extracted 5 factors was relatively high (73.8%), the explained variance is small if many loci are combined in one factor. Lastly, there are also other important gender-speci c modes of maternal-fetal stress transfer, such as placental in ammation [7], and additional research is required to determine how perturbations in stress-related biological responses conspire to in uence poor offspring outcomes.…”

“…Our group recently published two papers showing that pregnancy-related anxiety, as with other modes of PNMS (i.e. life events [4], catastrophic events [5] and anxiety not speci c to pregnancy [6]), could predict child emotional and behavioral problems in a gender-speci c pattern: conduct disorder and hyperactivity only in boys and emotional problems only in girls [7,8]. The underlying mechanism of gender differences in the effect of PNMS on child development is still poorly understood.…”

Gender-specific associations of pregnancy-related anxiety with placental epigenetic patterning of glucocorticoid response genes and preschooler’s emotional symptoms and hyperactivity

“…We add to the literature [39] by showing similar ndings in pregnancy-related anxiety, a special mode of prenatal stress that has received little attention but predicts fetal development outcomes more accurately than general anxiety and depression symptoms [40,41]. Compared with our two previous works [7,8], the present study found similar gender-dependent outcomes but only focused on pregnancy-related anxiety at the third trimester because this cohort data showed that the third trimester is the critical period of pregnancy-related anxiety on child neurobehavioral development [42]. All the three works [7,8] reported the male-bias hyperactivity symptoms but only two works [8] reported the female-bias emotional symptoms.…”