Maternal Corticotropin Releasing Hormone during pregnancy: A predictor for endocrine, cognitive and neural development in six- and seven-year-old children?

健康结果和疾病风险的很大一部分变化可归因于胎儿生命期间的发育过程，以应对各种环境，社会，心理，生理和遗传影响。目前的项目的目的是确定产前暴露于压力对6至7岁儿童杏仁核，海马和前额皮质体积的影响。在这些儿童的母亲怀孕期间进行了广泛的产前评估，并将用于对高危人群进行分类。不是完全依赖于母体压力的测量，而是在妊娠过程中胎盘促肾上腺皮质激素释放激素水平的测量将用作胎儿经历并响应压力信号的证据。由于上述脑结构是众所周知的，参与情绪和认知过程，与产前压力暴露和行为特征之间的关系，结构性脑改变将进行研究。有深刻的证据表明，产前和早期生活压力程序内分泌功能在以后的生活。因此，也将评估产前应激暴露对下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺轴的影响。因此，母亲在怀孕期间的压力和神经发育，内分泌和行为的发展中的孩子的结果之间的关系将得到阐明。为了了解高危妊娠干预措施的重要性，有必要研究这种关联。

A significant proportion of variation in health outcomes and disease risk is attributable to developmental processes during fetal life in response to various environmental, social, psychological, physiological and genetic influences. The aim of the current project is to determine the influence of prenatal exposure to stress on the volumes of the amygdala, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in 6 to 7 year-old children. Extensive prenatal assessment has been obtained during the children’s mothers’ pregnancies and will be used to classify high risk individuals. Instead of relying exclusively on measures of maternal stress, measures of placental Corticotropin Releasing Hormone levels over the course of gestation will be used as evidence that the fetus has experienced and responded to a stress signal. Since the above mentioned brain structures are well known to be involved in emotional and cognitive processes, the relationship between structural brain alterations in association with prenatal stress exposure and behavioural characteristics will be studied. There is profound evidence that prenatal and early life stress programs endocrine function in later life. Therefore, the influence of prenatal stress exposure on the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal axis will also be assessed. Thus, the relationship between maternal stress during pregnancy and neurodevelopmental, endocrine and behavioural outcomes in the developing child will be elucidated. Studying such associations is necessary in order to understand the importance for interventions in high risk pregnancies.