Pregnancy and Anxious Thoughts: The Role of the Immune and Endocrine Systems

Detailed Summary

The aim of the proposed research is to identify the clinical and biological phenotypes that define perinatal anxiety. The importance of this research to public health is that it will help to identify women at high risk, and will also serve as the basis for further studies that would identify genetic and epigenetic markers of risk and lead to research to identify novel treatment targets. The research is based upon preliminary data demonstrating a relationship between inflammatory cytokines and Trait anxiety in pregnancy; between progesterone and postpartum anxiety; and between allopregnanolone and obsessive symptoms in pregnancy. The proposed research will build upon these preliminary findings by prospectively examining the clinical features of anxiety in a cohort of pregnant women and healthy matched controls, and by analyzing blood samples from the same cohort for inflammatory cytokines, reproductive hormones, and immune cell types. The proposed study will therefore identify the clinical and biological phenotypes that characterize perinatal anxiety and will identify potential novel targets for treatment.

Study Details

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Interventions