ISSN: 2161-1165

Epidemiology: Open Access
Open Access

Our Group organises 3000+ Global Conferenceseries Events every year across USA, Europe & Asia with support from 1000 more scientific Societies and Publishes 700+ Open Access Journals which contains over 50000 eminent personalities, reputed scientists as editorial board members.

Open Access Journals gaining more Readers and Citations
700 Journals and 15,000,000 Readers Each Journal is getting 25,000+ Readers

This Readership is 10 times more when compared to other Subscription Journals (Source: Google Analytics)
  • Research Article   
  • Epidemiology (sunnyvale) 2014, Vol 4(4): 167
  • DOI: 10.4172/2161-1165.1000167

Effects of prenatal social stress and maternal dietary fatty acid ratio on infant temperament: Does race matter?

Kelly J. Brunst1*, Michelle Bosquet Enlow2, Srimathi Kannan3, Kecia N. Carroll4, Brent A. Coull5 and Rosalind J. Wright1,6
1Department of Pediatrics, Kravis Children’s Hospital, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, , One Gustave L. Levy Place, New York, NY 10029, USA
2Department of Psychiatry, Boston Children's Hospital, Program for Behavioral Science and Harvard Medical School, , 300 Longwood Avenue, AT-120.3, Boston, MA 02115, USA
3Human Nutrition and Dietetics, College of Agricultural Sciences, Southern Illinois University, 1205 Lincoln Drive, Carbondale, IL 62901, USA
4Department of Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, , 1161 21st Avenue, Nashville, TN 37232, USA
5Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, , 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA
6Mindich Child Health and Development Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, , 1428 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10029, USA
*Corresponding Author : Kelly J. Brunst Ph.D., Kravis Children’s Hospital, Department of Pediatrics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, One Gustave L. Levy Place, New York, USA, Tel: +1-212-241-9534, Fax: +1-646-537-9436, Email: kelly.brunst@mssm.edu

Received Date: Jul 29, 2014 / Accepted Date: Aug 08, 2014 / Published Date: Aug 15, 2014

Abstract

Background: Infant temperament predicts a range of developmental and behavioral outcomes throughout childhood. Both maternal fatty acid intake and psychosocial stress exposures during pregnancy may influence infant temperament. Furthermore, maternal race may modify prenatal diet and stress effects. The goals of this study are to examine the joint effects of prenatal diet and stress and the modifying effects of race on infant behavior.

Methods: Analyses included N=255 mother-infant dyads, primarily minorities (21% Blacks; 42% Hispanics), enrolled in an urban pregnancy cohort. Maternal prenatal stress was indexed by a negative life events (NLEs) score on the Crisis in Family Systems-Revised survey. Prenatal total daily intakes of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) (n3, n6) were estimated from a food frequency questionnaire; n3:n6 ratios were calculated. Mothers completed the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R), a measure of infant temperament, when the children were 6 months old. Three commonly used dimensions were derived: Orienting & Regulation, Extraversion, and Negative Affectivity.?Associations among prenatal stress, maternal n3:n6 ratio, and race/ethnicity on infant temperament, controlling for maternal education and age and child sex, were examined.

Results: Among Blacks, prenatal stress effects on infant Orienting & Regulation scores were modified by maternal n3:n6 ratios (p = 0.03):?As NLEs increased, lower n3:n6 ratios predicted lower infant Orienting & Regulation scores, whereas higher n3:n6 ratios attenuated the effect of prenatal stress. There were no main or interaction effects predicting Extraversion or Negative Affectivity.

Conclusions: An optimal PUFA ratio may protect the fetus from stress effects on infant behavior, particularly among Blacks. These findings may have implications for later neurodevelopment and social functioning predicted by early temperamental characteristics.

Keywords: Psychosocial stress; Temperament; Fatty acids; Ethnicity; Race

Citation: Brunst KJ, Enlow MB, Kannan S, Carroll KN, Coull BA, et al. (2014) Effects of Prenatal Social Stress and Maternal Dietary Fatty Acid Ratio on Infant Temperament: Does Race Matter?. Epidemiology (Sunnyvale) 4:167. Doi: 10.4172/2161-1165.1000167

Copyright: © 2014 Brunst KJ, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Top