Stress during pregnancy increases risks for baby immunity: study

Women who are stressed about money, relationships and other problems during pregnancy may give birth to babies who are predisposed to allergies and asthma, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

The findings, presented at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society in Toronto, suggest a mother’s stress during pregnancy may have lasting consequences for her child.

“This research adds to a growing body of evidence that links maternal stress such as that precipitated by financial problems or relationship issues to changes in children’s developing immune systems, even during pregnancy,” Dr. Rosalind Wright of Harvard Medical School in Boston said in a statement.

Wright and colleagues found mothers who were the most distressed during pregnancy were most likely to give birth to infants with higher levels of immunoglobulin E or IgE — an immune system compound — even though their mothers had only mild exposure to allergens during pregnancy.

Studies in animals have found that a mother’s stress amplifies the effects of allergen exposure on the immune system of the developing offspring. The Harvard team set out to see if they could find the same in humans.

They measured levels of IgE from the umbilical cord blood of 387 newborns in Boston.

Babies whose mothers were the most stressed out — but who had low exposure to dust mites in the home — still had high levels of IgE in their cord blood, a finding that suggests that stress increased the immune response to dust exposure.

This was true irrespective of the mother’s race, class, education or smoking history.

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