Cited by 269Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and PostpartumStress Responses and CortisolTryptophan and brain disorders

Inflammation: A Proposed Intermediary Between Maternal Stress and Offspring Neuropsychiatric Risk

Open access
Hantsoo, Liisa, Kornfield, Sara, Anguera, Montserrat C., Epperson, C. Neill·2019·Biological Psychiatry

Abstract

During pregnancy, programming of the fetal central nervous system establishes vulnerabilities for emergence of neuropsychiatric phenotypes later in life. Psychosocial influences during pregnancy, such as stressful life events and chronic stress, correlate with offspring neuropsychiatric disorders and inflammation, respectively. Stress promotes inflammation, but the role of inflammation as a mediator between maternal psychosocial stress and offspring neuropsychiatric outcomes has not been extensively studied in humans. This review summarizes clinical evidence linking specific types of stress to maternal inflammatory load during pregnancy. We propose that inflammation is a mediator in the relationship between psychosocial stress and offspring neuropsychiatric outcomes, potentially influenced by poor maternal glucocorticoid-immune coordination. We present relevant experimental animal research supporting this hypothesis. We conclude that clinical and preclinical research supports the premise that stress-induced maternal immune activation contributes in part to prenatal programming of risk. Programming of risk is likely due to a combination of vulnerabilities, including multiple or repeated inflammatory events; timing of such events; poor maternal regulation of inflammation; genetic vulnerability; and lifestyle contributors.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.biopsych.2018.08.018

Cites

147 of 147 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Hantsoo, L., Kornfield, S., Anguera, M. C., & Epperson, C. N.
Affiliations
University of Pennsylvania (US)
Corresponding author
Hantsoo, Liisa
Venue
Biological Psychiatry
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2019-01
Volume
85
Issue
2
Pages
97-106
ISSN
0006-3223 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2890036014
Cited by
269
References
147
Citations by year
2026: 18 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 39 · 2023: 69 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 50 · 2020: 27 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 1
FWCI
4.35
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Biological Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institute of Mental Health (K23MH107831, K23MH102360, P50 MH099910)
  • National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (AI124084)
  • Office of Research on Women's Health (MH099919, K12HD085848)
  • Brain and Behavior Research Foundation
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Behavioral Neuroscience › Stress Responses and Cortisol
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Biological Psychiatry › Tryptophan and brain disorders
Keywords
maternal stress, inflammation, maternal immune activation, prenatal programming, psychosocial stress, fetal central nervous system development, chronic stress, life events, genetic susceptibility
MeSH terms
Animals, Mental Disorders, Female, Humans, Immune System, Inflammation, Pregnancy, Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects, Stress, Psychological

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review