My Baby and Me
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Maternal Prenatal Stress and Child Development Study: My Baby and Me.
IRAS ID
119172
Contact name
Paul Ramchandani
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College London
Research summary
There is considerable evidence that if a mother is anxious or depressed while pregnant her child there is an increased risk of emotional and behavioural problems and an associated increased cortisol stress response. The underlying mechanisms are not yet understood, although there is some evidence that this is due to alterations in the filtering capacity of the placenta.
We aim to recruit 150 healthy pregnant women the day before an elective caesarean section, and ask them to complete self-rating questionnaires about their anxiety and depression symptoms. Post-delivery, cord blood and placental samples will be collected. The placental tissue will be used to study key proteins, and the cord blood to measure candidate mediating chemicals.
Approximately 3-4 months after delivery, we will assess mother-infant interaction using the Still-Face paradigm. In addition, this paradigm acts as a non-invasive stressor from which we can analyse the infant stress response through saliva samples. Samples will be collected from the infant before and after the paradigm for analysis of cortisol. A mouth (buccal) swab will also be taken at for epigenetic studies. The mothers will be asked to collect a small sample of their infant’s hair and nails to assess longer term cortisol levels. At this point we shall also invite fathers into this study to assess the postnatal environment.
At both 3-4 and 6 months the mothers and fathers will be asked to complete questionnaires about their infant’s behaviour, and their anxiety and depression symptoms.
The data will be analysed to determine any associations between symptoms of anxiety and depression in the mother and father, cord blood chemicals, placental expression and levels of key proteins, and the infant’s emotional/behavioural development and stress responses.REC name
London - Chelsea Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/LO/1436
Date of REC Opinion
31 Dec 2013
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion