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