Role of thyroid function in the intergenerational transmission of maternal childhood maltreatment effects

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Experience of childhood maltreatment (CM) may become biologically embedded in the exposed individual and may increase the risk for adverse mental and physical health effects later in life. Increasing evidence suggests that these adverse sequelae of CM may get transmitted to the next generation; however, the time window(s) and mechanisms of such intergenerational transmission have yet to be clarified. In the proposed project, I intend to address the hypothesis that transmission of the adverse consequences of CM commences already during the intrauterine period of development via alterations in gestational thyroid biology. An adequate supply with maternal thyroid hormones is of prime importance for normal fetal brain development and for cognitive functioning later in life. Cognitive deficits, in turn, often precede the same emotional and behavioral disorders that have been observed in children of CM-mothers und could thus represent a sensitive marker for disease risk. Maternal thyroid function could therefore have a mechanistic role in the intergenerational transmission of CM effects. As a first step addressing this hypothesis, the current project seeks to elucidate the associations between CM and thyroid function during pregnancy as well as cognitive development in the offspring in the first two years of life in a prospective longitudinal study. A unique strength of the current proposal is the availability of a very well-characterized cohort of 240 mother-child-dyads with and without CM that is currently being recruited. At three time points during pregnancy, psychosocial stress and its biological correlates are assessed. After birth (1, 6, 12, and 24 months) serial measures of infant development and environmental moderators are conducted (including multimodal imaging of the brain). The current proposal requests funds to add a) measures during pregnancy of maternal thyroid function (TSH, fT4, fT3, TT4, rT3, TPO-Ab, hCG), and b) detailed tests of infant cognitive function at 12 and 24 months of age. This study will shed light on the causes and mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of early life stress and inform early intervention strategies.