Rethinking mom’s and the prenatal environment: Epigenetic evidence of transgenerational effects of maternal life course and prenatal stress from neighborhoods to telomeres
Maternal prenatal stress, broadly defined, has been implicated in a range of negative outcomes across the life course. Despite this recognition efforts to both decrease prenatal stress as well as mitigate the negative effects on the offspring remain insufficient as is our understanding of the molecular mechanisms. Biological markers of exposure that track on to the different factors in a mother’s life that lead to lasting effects on the infant have the potential to significantly increase our knowledge of this important contributor to long-term health and potential differences by race and sex. This presentation will present data from the Infant Development Study, an NIH funded study to examine the impact of prenatal and maternal life course stress on infant development, physiology and molecular markers. Leveraging this prospective study of over 400 mothers recruited prenatally and followed over the first years of infant life. Data will be presented linking maternal early life stress to infant telomere length, a marker of cellular aging and stress. Additionally, we will present data linking maternal neighborhood level violence exposures to infant cortisol regulation and telomere length across the first year of life. Lastly we will present evidence of racial differences in cellular aging in the placenta and discuss the implications of this for the persistence of racial differences in preterm birth. Overall this presentation expects to present novel findings linking cellular aging and allostasis to both maternal life course and prenatal exposures and the implications of these findings for child health and development as well as health disparities.
