Pregnancy inflammation linked to postpartum anxiety among those with most severe symptoms
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Key takeaways:
- Researchers assessed anxiety symptoms and measured cytokine levels of 586 women throughout pregnancy.
- Pregnancy IL-1beta and IL-17a predicted postpartum anxiety at 50% and 75% quartiles, respectively.
NEW YORK — New data suggests a link between inflammation during pregnancy and postpartum anxiety among women experiencing the highest anxiety symptoms, according to a poster at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting.
“In this work, I’m looking at inflammation during pregnancy and whether inflammation can predict postpartum mood symptoms, specifically anxiety,” Carly A. Kaplan, ScB, a student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told Healio.
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Although previous research suggested inflammation as a factor in pathogenesis of both depression and anxiety, Kaplan and colleagues sought to examine the relationship between pregnancy cytokines and postpartum anxiety, which has not been thoroughly explored.
Their study included 586 women (mean age, 33 years; 45.67% white) from Generation C, a prospective pregnancy cohort, who were recruited from April 2020 to February 2022 from those receiving obstetric care at Mount Sinai Health System.
Anxiety symptoms were assessed 1 to 8 months postpartum via the Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) questionnaire, while cytokine levels were measured by routine blood draw throughout pregnancy.
Researchers employed quantile regressions to analyze the relationship between four distinct cytokines — IL-6, IL-17a, IL-1beta and CRP — and GAD scores at the 50th and 75th percentiles, adjusting for a range of health and socioeconomic factors including maternal age, race/ethnicity, education, parity, SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy and GAD assessment timing.
According to results, the mean GAD score for the cohort was 2.8.
After adjusting for cofounders, IL-17a was significantly associated with a higher GAD score at the 75% quantile (P = .049), as was IL-1beta at the 50% quantile (P = .024). CRP and IL-6 were not significantly associated with postpartum anxiety symptoms.
“These preliminary findings suggest a link between pregnancy inflammation and postpartum anxiety among those experiencing the highest anxiety symptoms,” researchers wrote. “While specific mechanisms require further exploration, these findings add to the larger conversation surrounding the hypothesized role of maternal immune activation in postpartum mood disorders.”