Early-life stress includes prenatal, postnatal, and adolescence stress. Early-life stress can affect the development of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and cause cellular and molecular changes in the developing hippocampus that can result in neurobehavioral changes later in life. Epidemiological data implicate stress as a cause of seizures in both children and adults. Emerging ev...

Maternal exposure to significant prenatal stress can negatively affect infant neurobiological development and increase the risk for developmental and health disturbances. These effects may be pronounced in low SES and ethnic minority families. We explored prenatal partner support as a buffer of the impact of prenatal stress on cortisol reactivity of infants born to low-income Mexican American w...

RATIONALE Critical periods for programming early wheeze risk may include pregnancy and infancy. Effects of timing remain poorly understood. OBJECTIVES Associations among prenatal and postnatal maternal stress and children's wheeze were prospectively examined in 653 families. Effect modification by maternal sensitization was also examined. METHODS Stress was indexed by a maternal negative li...

The gestational state is a period of particular vulnerability to diseases that affect maternal and fetal health. Stress during gestation may represent a powerful influence on maternal mental health and offspring brain plasticity and development. Here we show that the fetal transcriptome, through microRNA (miRNA) regulation, responds to prenatal stress in association with epigenetic signatures o...

Introduction: Prenatal stress has deleterious effects on the development of the brain and is associated with behavioral and psychosocial problems in childhood and adulthood. This study aimed to determine the protective effect of L-arginine on fetal brain under maternal stress. Methods: Twenty pregnant Wistar rats (weighting 200-230 g) were randomly divided into 4 groups (n=5 for each group). T...

PRENATAL STRESS ALTERS SINGLE-TRIAL CONDITIONED PLACE PREFERENCE IN ADOLESCENT RATS Stephanie L. Karsner, M.A. George Mason University, 2011 Thesis Director: Dr. Robert F. Smith Early environmental and behavioral experiences can affect development during adolescence and even adulthood. Prenatal effects can result in lasting changes on the nervous system and behavior. Gestational stress has been...

BACKGROUND Accumulating evidence indicates that prenatal maternal and fetal processes can have a lasting influence on infant and child development. Results from animal models indicate that prenatal exposure to maternal stress and stress hormones has lasting consequences for development of the offspring. Few prospective studies of human pregnancy have examined the consequences of prenatal exposu...

OBJECTIVE Prenatal exposure to inappropriate levels of glucocorticoids (GCs) and maternal stress are putative mechanisms for the fetal programming of later health outcomes. The current investigation examined the influence of prenatal maternal cortisol and maternal psychosocial stress on infant physiological and behavioral responses to stress. METHODS The study sample comprised 116 women and t...

OBJECTIVE To examine the effects of prenatal stress on cognition and behavioral fearfulness in infants. METHOD Mothers were recruited at amniocentesis at Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital, London, between 2001 and 2005, and recalled when their children were 14 to 19 months to assess cognitive development using the Bayley Scales and fearfulness using the Lab-TAB. Measures of prenatal and ...

OBJECTIVES Maternal prenatal stress is associated with elevated risk of adverse behavioural outcomes in offspring. This association may involve developmental disruption to limbic-prefrontal white matter circuitry, of which the uncinate fasciculus is the major tract. One potential candidate for modulating brain development is maternal prenatal stress. We provide the first prospective study of pr...