A biocultural study of the effects of maternal stress on mother and newborn health in the D emocratic R epublic of C ongo
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8312339 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nicole C Rodney (Department of Anthropology University of Florida Gainesville FL 32611), C J Mulligan (0000-0002-4360-2402, Department of Anthropology University of Florida Gainesville FL 32611, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 155 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 200-209 |
| Publication date | 2014-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Journal of Physical Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-9483 • E-ISSN: 1096-8644 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/ajpa.22568 |
| PMID | 25043696 |
| OpenAlex | W1960033715 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 27 |
| References cited | 68 |
The impact of stress on human health is a topic of wide‐spread relevance and one that is particularly amenable to multidisciplinary investigation. Stress impacts both our psychological and physical health and, thus, may leave evidence on our psyche, our physical body and our genome. We are interested in the effect of extreme stressors, such as war, on health from the perspective of long‐term and multigenerational effects. We integrate sociocultural, biological, and epigenetic data from the war‐torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Between May and August, 2010, we measured sociocultural stress exposure among 25 mother‐newborn dyads and we measured health outcomes in newborns. We also collected maternal venous blood, placental tissue, and umbilical cord blood to assay for methylation changes to test for a possible epigenetic mechanism that mediates the effects of stress on health. We provide a qualitative description of the wide range of stress exposures experienced by mothers in our study. As we have shown previously, maternal war stress is strongly associated with newborn birthweight and changes in newborn methylation at the glucocorticoid receptor NR3C1 . New results presented here demonstrate that maternal war stress and birthweight are also associated with genome‐wide changes in maternal methylation levels. In sum, these results suggest that stress may influence gene expression across a broad spectrum in the individual who directly experiences the stress, i.e., the mother, whereas potential heritable effects in the newborn may be focused on specific genes that are uniquely sensitive to environmental cues. Am J Phys Anthropol 155:200–209, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc
Biology · Developmental psychology · DNA methylation · Epigenetics · Gene · Gene expression · Sociocultural evolution · Stressor · Birth, Development, and Health · Clinical Psychology · Epigenetics and DNA Methylation · Genetics · Medicine · Migration, Health and Trauma · Physiology · Psychology
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| Unique citing works | 27 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,45 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2026 (12) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 25 |