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Review
. 2020 Apr:57:100820.
doi: 10.1016/j.yfrne.2020.100820. Epub 2020 Jan 24.

Pregnancy, postpartum and parity: Resilience and vulnerability in brain health and disease

Nicholas P Deems  1 , Benedetta Leuner  2
Affiliations
Review

Pregnancy, postpartum and parity: Resilience and vulnerability in brain health and disease

Nicholas P Deems et al. Front Neuroendocrinol. 2020 Apr.

Abstract

Risk and resilience in brain health and disease can be influenced by a variety of factors. While there is a growing appreciation to consider sex as one of these factors, far less attention has been paid to sex-specific variables that may differentially impact females such as pregnancy and reproductive history. In this review, we focus on nervous system disorders which show a female bias and for which there is data from basic research and clinical studies pointing to modification in disease risk and progression during pregnancy, postpartum and/or as a result of parity: multiple sclerosis (MS), depression, stroke, and Alzheimer's disease (AD). In doing so, we join others (Shors, 2016; Galea et al., 2018a) in aiming to illustrate the importance of looking beyond sex in neuroscience research.

Keywords: Allogregnanolone; Alzheimer’s disease; Estrogen; Fetal microchimerism; Immune; Maternal; Multiple sclerosis; Postpartum depression; Progesterone; Prolactin; Stroke.

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