Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 83, Issue 2, 15 January 2018, Pages 120-127
Biological Psychiatry

Archival Report
Intergenerational Effect of Maternal Exposure to Childhood Maltreatment on Newborn Brain Anatomy

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.07.009Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Childhood maltreatment (CM) confers deleterious long-term consequences, and growing evidence suggests some of these effects may be transmitted across generations. We examined the intergenerational effect of maternal CM exposure on child brain structure and also addressed the hypothesis that this effect may start during the child’s intrauterine period of life.

Methods

A prospective longitudinal study was conducted in a clinical convenience sample of 80 mother-child dyads. Maternal CM exposure was assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Structural magnetic resonance imaging was employed to characterize newborn global and regional brain (tissue) volumes near the time of birth.

Results

CM exposure was reported by 35% of the women. Maternal CM exposure was associated with lower child intracranial volume (F1,70 = 6.84, p = .011), which was primarily due to a global difference in cortical gray matter (F1,70 = 9.10, p = .004). The effect was independent of potential confounding variables, including maternal socioeconomic status, obstetric complications, obesity, recent interpersonal violence, pre- and early postpartum stress, gestational age at birth, infant sex, and postnatal age at magnetic resonance imaging scan. The observed group difference between offspring of CM-exposed mothers versus nonexposed mothers was 6%.

Conclusions

These findings represent the first report to date associating maternal CM exposure with variation in newborn brain structure. These observations support our hypothesis of intergenerational transmission of the effects of maternal CM exposure on child brain development and suggest this effect may originate during the child’s intrauterine period of life, which may have downstream neurodevelopmental consequences.

Section snippets

Study Population

The study was conducted at the University of California, Irvine, Development, Health and Disease Research Program in a clinical convenience cohort of 131 pregnant women receiving prenatal care at university and other affiliated institutions and clinics. Participants were recruited in the first trimester of pregnancy and followed up with serial assessments at each trimester. All participants had singleton, intrauterine pregnancies, with no known cord, placental, or uterine anomalies or fetal

Descriptives

Complete data were available in 80 mother-child dyads; 35% of these mothers (n = 28) reported exposure to at least one type of moderate-to-severe CM. Key maternal and child characteristics, delineated by maternal CM status, are depicted in Table 1.

Global Brain and Tissue Volumes

Compared with newborns of mothers without CM, newborns of CM+ mothers had a significantly smaller ICV (F1,70 = 6.84, p = .011, padj = .022, ηp2 = .089). Specifically, there was a significant difference in GM volume (F1,70 = 9.10, p = .004, padj =

Discussion

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to establish an association between maternal CM exposure and her child’s brain anatomy. Newborns of mothers who had experienced CM had a significantly smaller overall brain size and less GM volume than those born to mothers who had not experienced CM. The observation that this effect of maternal CM on child brain anatomy is already evident at birth supports our premise that the intergenerational, mother-to-child transmission of the adverse

Acknowledgments and Disclosures

This work was supported by U.S. Public Health Service (National Institutes of Health) Grant Nos. R01 MH-091351, R01 MH-105538, R01 HD-060628, and UG3 OD-O23349 (all to PDW and CB).

The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.

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