EuroSTRESS - PELS

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Animal studies have shown that early life stress at moments when critical developmental processes are parts of the nervous system or neuronal circuits involved in HPA-axis functioning (e.g., hippocampus, amygdala, prefrontal cortex), may induce epigenetic changes that alter later function of the HPA axis and cause more enhanced stress sensitivity and impaired cognitive and emotional development, especially in genetically|individuals. Although there is now good evidence that prenatal stress can have a long lasting effect in humans there have been no studies of any interaction with underlying genetic factors, which may explain why some are more sensitive or resilient than others. The main goal of our CRP is to delineate specific risk factors prenatal stress exposure that can result in adverse neurodevelopment of the child. We have designed two|studies one of which involves recruiting a new cohort in which each of the four countries will follow an identical protocol and the second of which involves collecting DNA and new questionnaire data in our existing cohorts. feature of the first study is that we examine stress in early and late pregnancy to identify critical periods their associated outcomes. In the second study we maximize the value of existing samples within each country examine differences in exposure and outcomes at various child ages. The primary aims of our CRP are (the contribution of various types of antenatal maternal stress, including work stress and antenatal maternal level, for offspring birth outcomes and neurodevelopment in early childhood (2) to determine whether prenatal exposure interacts with measures of genetic susceptibility (i.e. specific candidate genes related to HPA-axis functioning), in predicting offspring neurodevelopmental outcome Results of our CRP may lead to prevention intervention strategies focusing on minimizing the risks prenatal stress bears for later mental health.|