A Study on the Association between Maternal Childhood Trauma Exposure and Placental-fetal Stress Physiology during Pregnancy

TL;DR

This study investigates how maternal childhood trauma influences placental-fetal stress hormone levels during pregnancy, revealing a significant association that varies notably around week 20 of gestation, supporting a potential mechanism for intergenerational trauma effects.

Contribution

It provides novel evidence linking maternal childhood trauma to changes in placental stress hormone dynamics, using advanced statistical models to capture the non-linear relationship during pregnancy.

Findings

Women with childhood trauma have 11.9% higher pCRH levels at term.

pCRH increase rate is four times faster after week 20.

Bayesian and frequentist methods yield consistent results.

Abstract

It has been found that the effect of childhood trauma (CT) exposure may pass on to the next generation. Scientists have hypothesized that the association between CT exposure and placental-fetal stress physiology is the mechanism. A study was conducted to examine the hypothesis. To examine the association between CT exposure and placental corticotrophin-releasing hormone (pCRH), linear mixed effect model and hierarchical Bayesian linear model were constructed. In Bayesian inference, by providing conditionally conjugate priors, Gibbs sampler was used to draw MCMC samples. Piecewise linear mixed effect model was conducted in order to adjust to the dramatic change of pCRH at around week 20 into pregnancy. Pearson residual, QQ, ACF and trace plots were used to justify the model adequacy. Likelihood ratio test and DIC were utilized to model selection. The association between CT exposure and pCRH during pregnancy is obvious. The effect of CT exposure on pCRH varies dramatically over gestational age. Women with one childhood trauma would experience 11.9% higher in pCRH towards the end of pregnancy than those without childhood trauma. The increase rate of pCRH after week 20 is almost four-fold larger than that before week 20. Frequentist and Bayesian inference produce similar results. The findings support the hypothesis that the effect of CT exposure on pCRH over GA exists. The effect changes dramatically at around week 20 into pregnancy.