Maternal Prenatal Psychological Distress, Poor Nutrition and Atypical Child Development

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Many adults in the United Kingdom suffer from psychological distress. Psychological distress can range from worrying a lot, to feeling down, to even more serious problems. Importantly, existing research suggests that adults with psychological difficulties often also have cognitive and behavioural problems as children. Understanding how psychological distress develops is a crucial first step in helping us (i) identify which children are most at risk and (ii) develop targeted strategies to prevent or manage such problems. The reasoning here is that if we can prevent the development of psychological distress in childhood, these children will be less likely to show psychological distress as adults. We already know that children who show cognitive and behavioural problems tend to come from riskier circumstances. For example, these children can have mothers with psychological difficulties. Moreover, families that have psychological difficulties also tend to eat foods that are of poor nutritional quality (e.g. fast foods, sweets). These two risks (i.e. mother psychological distress and poor diet) are thought to impact development in a range of ways - including on how a child develops in terms of biology. One of the ways the child's biology might be affected is through the nutrition the child is exposed to during pregnancy (i.e., what the mother eats). Therefore, during pregnancy, a developing foetus could be exposed to both psychological distresses in the mother as well as sub-optimal diets. It is important to note that the same is true for after the birth of a child. In fact, our previous research shows that maternal psychological distress and poor nutrition show continuity between pregnancy and after the birth of a child. To date, however, existing studies have not teased out the specific biological mechanisms that could explain how a particular exposure during pregnancy (or after birth) might relate to increased risk for adjustment problems. One potentially important biological factor of this kind is 'DNA methylation'. DNA methylation allows a way for changes in an individual's environment to influence how their genetic make-up ('genes') affects development. Animal research shows that what a mother eats during pregnancy can change the action of genes important for the development of brain regions involved in how we respond to stress, in emotions and in the control of behaviours and emotions. Importantly, this work also highlights that these DNA influences (and brain changes) are potentially reversible. The very limited number of studies in humans so far shows similar patterns.In this study we plan to address two key potential limitations of existing research: (1) Existing studies have not examined maternal distress and poor nutrition at the same time. (2) Existing studies have not assessed which biological mechanisms could explain how maternal distress and unhealthy diet might relate to child adjustment problems. (3) Existing studies have not assessed if biological vulnerabilities established in pregnancy can be carried forward after the birth of a child. This study will address each of these main limitations of the existing research. We are ideally placed to achieve these aims as we have access to psychological, dietary, behavioural and biological data already collected from two very large scale samples of children, extensively studied from before their birth through childhood and into adolescence (The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, in Southwest England and Generation R, Rotterdam, The Netherlands). We hope that results from this research will help answer questions around why some children are more likely to have cognitive and behavioural problems, and guide early intervention for high-risk children to prevent atypical DNA methylation patterns that may underlie them.