A Cohort Study of Preterm Delivery in Relation to Partner Abuse, Mood and Anxiety

Harvard School Of Public Health, Boston MA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by investigator): Project Summary/Abstract (Description) Preterm delivery (PTD) continues to be one of the most significant unsolved problems of public health and perinatology. There is increasing evidence that PTD is a complex cluster of problems with a set of overlapping factors and influences. As recently summarized by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) the causes of PTD include individual-level behavioral and psychological factors, environmental exposures, medical conditions, biological factors, and genetics, many of which occur in combination. Members of the IOM expert panel also noted that persistent methodological limitations in previous studies, including treating PTD as a single entity and failure to recognize important common pathophysiological pathways that may lead to PTD (e.g., systematic inflammation, endothelial dysfunction, oxidative stress, and placental ischemia) have hindered discovery of potential treatment and prevention strategies. Previous studies have not rigorously evaluated the independent and joint effects of potent highly relevant social and neuropsychological risk factors of PTD in high risk populations. Increased efforts that integrate interdisciplinary research approaches are clearly needed to understand PTD from biological, clinical, and public health perspectives. The overarching objective of this study is to provide much-needed fundamental information concerning risk of PTD in relation to women's mental health status and exposure to violence before and during pregnancy. We will develop a prospective cohort of 6,000 Peruvian women. We will study the relation of maternal history of childhood sexual abuse, lifetime- and pregnancy-IPV with the prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders (e.g., major depression, minor depression, generalized anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]). We will also study associations of PTD risk with mood disorder and anxiety disorder early in pregnancy. We will evaluate the extent to which risk of PTD is influenced by alternations in multiple biological markers of maternal neuroendocrine, vascular, and immune status. Finally, we will study the mediational effect of maternal mental health and physiological status in the relation between IPV and PTD.