Aims: prenatal tobacco exposure (PTE) is an important public health concern for the offspring of teen mothers. We examined whether PTE is associated with baseline cortisol levels in four-month-old infants of teenage mothers.
Methods: we assessed salivary cortisol levels of 212 infants. PTE was measured by using self-reports of cigarette smoking during pregnancy. We used a propensity scores matching analysis to compare infants with PTE and those without.
Results: of 212 mothers, 151 smoked during pregnancy. However, there was no association between PTE and infant cortisol levels.
Conclusions: we could not support a relation between PTE and cortisol levels in a sample of four-month-old infants of teenage mothers.