Prenatal maternal mental health symptoms predict infant leptin at birth

Samantha R Scott; Erika M Manczak

doi:10.1016/j.bbih.2021.100317

Prenatal maternal mental health symptoms predict infant leptin at birth

Brain Behav Immun Health. 2021 Aug 18:16:100317. doi: 10.1016/j.bbih.2021.100317. eCollection 2021 Oct.

Authors

Samantha R Scott¹, Erika M Manczak¹

Affiliation

¹ University of Denver, Department of Psychology, Denver, CO, USA.

Abstract

Childhood obesity can be predicted by metabolic signaling at birth. Understanding what exposure factors, such as prenatal mental health, predict metabolic signaling at birth are important for understanding the etiology of childhood metabolic dysregulation. Drawing on data from the Born in Bradford (BiB) multi-ethnic birth cohort in the United Kingdom (N = 2962 dyads), this study examined associations between maternal prenatal mental health symptoms and infant leptin and adiponectin. We tested whether total maternal prenatal symptoms as well as specific symptom subscales forecasted infant cord blood levels of leptin and adiponectin. We found that higher total maternal mental health symptoms and somatic symptoms, specifically, predicted lower infant cord blood leptin. We did not find evidence that maternal prenatal mental health symptoms predicted adiponectin. Together, our findings suggest that maternal mental health symptoms may become biologically embedded through infant metabolic changes via leptin.

Keywords: Adiponectin; Leptin; Prenatal mental health.