Maternal Prenatal Stress and Offspring Wheeze in Dyads Experiencing High Adversity

Abstract

Abstract Significant disparities in childhood asthma rates exist across racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. Evidence links in utero exposure to maternal psychological stress with childhood wheezing and asthma, but mechanisms for this association remain poorly elucidated. Furthermore, pregnant women facing high adversity are often missing from clinical trials limiting available data to examine potential relationships between maternal stress and childhood respiratory health. We report results from secondary analyses of data from the Vitamin C to Decrease Effects of Smoking in Pregnancy on Infant Lung Function (VCSIP) study. VCSIP is a randomized double-blind controlled trial of vitamin C supplementation (500mg/daily) during pregnancy to decrease some of the harmful effects of tobacco smoke on offspring pulmonary function, measured at 3 months of life. First, we describe associations between prenatal maternal hair cortisol concentration (HCC) and any report of childhood wheeze through 12 months of age among 158 women facing high adversity and who smoke cigarettes. Hairs from a subset of 33 nonsmokers were available to examine the effect of smoking on HCC. Second, we report VCSIP study procedures, descriptive statistics of recruitment and retention, and provide a 4 - Step plan to recruitment and retention of pregnant women from marginalized populations into randomized clinical trials.