Association between maternal perceived stress during pregnancy and offspring DNA methylation changes in HPA axis genes at birth in the ECHO Consortium

Abstract

Evidence has linked maternal exposure to stress during pregnancy with poor offspring health and neurodevelopmental outcomes. However, the precise mechanism by which this may occur has not been fully elucidated. In this study, we examined whether maternal perceived stress during pregnancy was associated with newborn blood DNA methylation (DNAm) in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis-related genes (NR3C1, FKBP5, and HSD11B2) in single CpG site and gene-based analyses. We analysed a subset of 661 mother-child pairs from the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes cohort study that met our analytic inclusion criteria. Maternal perceived stress was measured during pregnancy using the perceived stress scale, and newborn DNAm was measured using the Illumina 450K and EPIC Beadchips in cord blood and dried blood spots. Single-site associations were evaluated using linear regression models, and gene-based associations were evaluated using mean burden and variance component tests, adjusted for sociodemographic and lifestyle covariates. Sex-stratified models were used to evaluate sex differential effects. Prenatal perceived stress was statistically significantly associated with newborn DNAm in one CpG site (cg06613263) in NR3C1 and with aggregate DNAm in NR3C1 and FKBP5. Aggregate DNAm in FKBP5 was more strongly associated with prenatal perceived stress in female infants. These results may have important implications for improving offspring health and well-being by providing molecular targets that can be used to identify high-risk individuals and as a basis for developing and evaluating effective behaviour and pharmaceutical interventions.

Keywords: DNA methylation; HPA axis; perceived stress; pregnancy.

Figure 1.

Volcano plot of association testing results for prenatal perceived stress and newborn blood DNAm in NR3C1, FKBP5, and HSD11B2. Each point represents a CpG site. The dashed line represents the Bonferroni-corrected significance threshold (P < .0007).