Inflammation during pregnancy may prime offspring for anxiety

Good news! It has been suspected for decades that events during a woman's pregnancy may cause serious disorders etc. affecting her child possibly for the rest of the child's life. 

"Increased risk for anxiety may begin before birth, shaped by infection or stressful events during pregnancy, according to a new preclinical study ...

While scientists have long known that maternal difficulty during pregnancy may raise a child’s risk for psychiatric illness, the biological pathways between these prenatal experiences and later mental health have been unclear. ..."

From the highlights and abstract:

"Highlights

• Adverse gestational environment is a risk factor for psychiatric disorders

• Gestational adversity has variable neuronal transcriptomic effects

• The most affected hippocampal neurons are activated in a stressful environment

• Higher neuronal activity during transition from safe to threatening environment

Summary

An adverse gestational environment is a risk factor for the development of psychiatric disorders. Although studies have implicated modifications in neuronal DNA and chromatin, how these changes come about and lead to abnormal behaviors is not known.

We sought to identify persistent DNA/chromatin and transcriptomic signatures induced by a proinflammatory gestational environment in the ventral dentate gyrus (vDG), a hippocampal region linked to anxiety. 

A proinflammatory environment shifted DNA methylation of enhancers and promoters and altered synapse-related gene expression, resulting in transcriptional heterogeneity in the vDG.

In animals with prior adversity, exposure to a threatening environment recruited vDG neurons with the greatest transcriptional changes, notably in synapse-relevant genes that also tended to be differentially methylated.

Finally, vDG activity was increased during transition from a safe to a threatening environment in animals with prior adversity but not in controls, suggesting their enhanced perception of a potential threat.

Our data outline a proinflammatory gestational environment-induced neurobiological sequence that leads to anxiety."

Inflammation during pregnancy may prime offspring for anxiety | Cornell Chronicle

Adverse gestational environment configures a subpopulation of ventral dentate granule cells for recruitment to drive innate anxiety (open access)

Graphical abstract

Figure 2 An adverse gestational environment preferentially alters methylation at intermediately methylated CGs in vDGCs