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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

Maternal stress during pregnancy and telomere length in children

Maternal stress during pregnancy and child telomere length

Adverse maternal psychosocial factors during pregnancy were associated with shorter leukocyte telomere length in newborns, whereas protective factors such as resilience and high quality of life were associated with longer leukocyte telomere length.

The study aimed to investigate whether risk factors such as maternal adverse childhood experiences and prenatal psychological distress, as well as protective factors such as resilience and high quality of life, were associated with newborn leukocyte telomere length (LTL). Data from 1,943 mother–child pairs in the FinnBrain Birth Cohort were analyzed; mothers completed questionnaires assessing adverse childhood experiences, levels of prenatal psychological distress, and protective factors at different stages of pregnancy, and umbilical cord blood samples were collected at birth to measure newborn LTL. Associations were examined using multivariable linear regression models adjusted for relevant maternal, pregnancy-related, and neonatal covariates, and analyses stratified by infant sex were also performed. Higher levels of maternal positive and resilience factors were associated with longer newborn LTL, whereas higher levels of adverse factors were associated with shorter LTL. Consistent with this, higher pregnancy-specific anxiety in mid- and late pregnancy was associated with shorter telomere length, while higher maternal quality of life was associated with longer telomere length. These associations were observed across the full sample and appeared more pronounced in male newborns. The findings suggest that telomere biology, a marker of cellular aging, may be shaped as early as the intrauterine period.

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