Affiliation:
1. Department of Psychology Stanford University Stanford CA USA
2. Department of Psychological Sciences University of Connecticut Storrs CT USA
3. Department of Pediatrics Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford CA USA
4. Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford CA USA
5. Department of Biomedical Data Science Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford CA USA
Abstract
BackgroundUnderstanding the prenatal origins of children's psychopathology is a fundamental goal in developmental and clinical science. Recent research suggests that inflammation during pregnancy can trigger a cascade of fetal programming changes that contribute to vulnerability for the emergence of psychopathology. Most studies, however, have focused on a handful of proinflammatory cytokines and have not explored a range of prenatal biological pathways that may be involved in increasing postnatal risk for emotional and behavioral difficulties.MethodsUsing extreme gradient boosted machine learning models, we explored large‐scale proteomics, considering over 1,000 proteins from first trimester blood samples, to predict behavior in early childhood. Mothers reported on their 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children's (N = 89, 51% female) temperament (Child Behavior Questionnaire) and psychopathology (Child Behavior Checklist).ResultsWe found that machine learning models of prenatal proteomics predict 5%–10% of the variance in children's sadness, perceptual sensitivity, attention problems, and emotional reactivity. Enrichment analyses identified immune function, nervous system development, and cell signaling pathways as being particularly important in predicting children's outcomes.ConclusionsOur findings, though exploratory, suggest processes in early pregnancy that are related to functioning in early childhood. Predictive features included far more proteins than have been considered in prior work. Specifically, proteins implicated in inflammation, in the development of the central nervous system, and in key cell‐signaling pathways were enriched in relation to child temperament and psychopathology measures.
Funder
Stanford Maternal and Child Health Research Institute
March of Dimes Foundation
National Institutes of Health
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
National Institute of Mental Health
Subject
Psychiatry and Mental health,Developmental and Educational Psychology,Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health