Maternal anxiety during pregnancy and newborn epigenome-wide DNA methylation.

ABSTRACT: Maternal anxiety during pregnancy is associated with adverse foetal, neonatal, and child outcomes, but biological mechanisms remain unclear. Altered foetal DNA methylation (DNAm) has been proposed as a potential underlying mechanism. In the current study, we performed a meta-analysis to examine the associations between maternal anxiety, measured prospectively during pregnancy, and genome-wide DNAm from umbilical cord blood. Sixteen non-overlapping cohorts from 12 independent longitudinal studies of the Pregnancy And Childhood Epigenetics Consortium participated, resulting in a combined dataset of 7243 mother-child dyads. We examined prenatal anxiety in relation to genome-wide DNAm and differentially methylated regions. We observed no association between the general symptoms of anxiety duri

SUBMITTER: Sammallahti S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8595870 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature