Prenatal cortisol was associated with infant negative emotionality in a sex dependent manner.
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Females exposed to high prenatal cortisol were more negatively emotional, but males were less negatively emotional.
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There may therefore be sex differences in fetal programming mechanisms.
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There are implications for understanding sex differences in developmental psychopathology.
Abstract
Objective
Prenatal stress influences fetal developmental trajectories, which may implicate glucocorticoid mechanisms. There is also emerging evidence that effects of prenatal stress on offspring development are sex-dependent. However, little is known about the prospective relationship between maternal prenatal cortisol levels and infant behaviour, and whether it may be different in male and female infants. We sought to address this question using data from a prospective longitudinal cohort, stratified by risk.
Method
The Wirral Child Health and Development Study (WCHADS) cohort (n = 1233) included a stratified random sub-sample (n = 216) who provided maternal saliva samples, assayed for cortisol, at home over two days at 32 weeks of pregnancy (on waking, 30-min post-waking and during the evening) and a measure of infant negative emotionality from the Neonatal Behavioural Assessment Scale (NBAS) at five weeks-of-age. General population estimates of associations among measures were obtained using inverse probability weights.
Results
Maternal prenatal cortisol sampled on waking predicted infant negative emotionality in a sex-dependent manner (interaction term, p = 0.005); female infants exposed to high levels of prenatal cortisol were more negative (Beta = 0.440, p = 0.042), whereas male infants were less negative (Beta = − 0.407, p = 0.045). There was no effect of the 30-min post-waking measure or evening cortisol.
Discussion
Our findings add to an emerging body of work that has highlighted sex differences in fetal programming, whereby females become more reactive following prenatal stress, and males less reactive. A more complete understanding of sex-specific developmental trajectories in the context of prenatal stress is essential for the development of targeted prevention strategies.
