Association between maternal prenatal depressive symptoms and offspring epigenetic aging at 3-5 weeks

Abstract

Epigenetic clocks are emerging as tools for assessing acceleration and deceleration of biological age during childhood. Maternal depression during pregnancy may affect the biological aging of offspring and related development. In a low-income cohort of mother-child dyads, we investigated the relationship between prenatal maternal depressive symptoms and infant epigenetic age residuals, which represent the deviation (acceleration or deceleration) that exists between predicted biological age and chronological age. The epigenetic age residuals were derived from a pediatric-specific buccal epithelial clock. We hypothesized that maternal depressive symptoms, both sub-clinical and elevated (clinical level), would be associated with estimated biological age deceleration in offspring during early infancy. We analyzed data from 94 mother-child dyads using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and DNA methylation derived from offspring buccal cells collected at 3-5 weeks of age. There was a significant non-linear association between the EPDS score and epigenetic age residual (β = -0.017, 95% confidence interval: -0.03,-0.01, P = <0.01). The results indicated that infants of mothers with sub-clinical depressive symptoms had the lowest infant epigenetic age residuals while infants of mothers with no-to-low depressive symptoms had the highest and experienced biological age acceleration. Maternal depressive symptoms may influence the biological aging of offspring living in poverty.

Keywords: Child poverty; Developmental origins of health and disease; Infant epigenetic age; Maternal prenatal depression.

Figure 1.

A polynomial regression model demonstrated a non-linear relationship between prenatal maternal depressive symptoms and offspring epigenetic age residual. The regression model including a quadratic term for EPDS score is represented by the dashed line and 95% confidence intervals.

Figure 2.

Offspring of mothers with no-to-low prenatal depressive symptoms, as characterized by the EPDS score category 0–2 (A), exhibited epigenetic age residual with an average of 0.06 in contrast to offspring of mothers with sub-clinical (average epigenetic age residual: −0.03) or elevated (average epigenetic age residual: −0.02) depressive symptoms. A similar trend was observed with the second cutoff levels (B). The open circles indicate individual participant epigenetic age residuals (estimate of degree of biological age acceleration or deceleration), and the larger, closed circles are averages generated from the unadjusted models.