PHIND Seminar Series: Maternal Trauma History, Attachment Style, and Depression Are Associated with Broad DNA Methylation Signatures in Infants
Thalia Robakis, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Psychiatry
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Location: Zoom
Webinar URL: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/95483174518
Dial: US: +1 650 724 9799 or +1 833 302 1536 (Toll Free)
Webinar ID: 954 8317 4518
Passcode: 179384
11:00am – 12:00pm Seminar & Discussion
RSVP Here
ABSTRACT
Background: The early environment provides many cues to young organisms that guide their development as they mature. Maternal personality and behavior are an important aspect of the environment of the developing human infant. The molecular mechanisms by which these influences are exerted are not well understood. We attempted to identify whether maternal traits could be associated with alterations in DNA methylation patterns in infants.
Methods: 32 women oversampled for history of depression were recruited in pregnancy and provided information on depressive symptoms, attachment style, and history of early life adversity. Buccal cell DNA was obtained from their infants at six months of age for a large-scale analysis of methylation patterns across 5×106 individual CpG dinucleotides, using clustering-based criteria for significance to control for multiple comparisons. Separately, associations between maternal depression, attachment style, and history of adversity and psychobehavioral outcomes in preschool-age children were examined.
Results: Tens of thousands of individual infant CpGs were alternatively methylated in association with each of the three studied maternal traits. Genes implicated in cell-cell communication, developmental patterning, growth, immune function/inflammatory response, and neurotransmission were identified. The result sets were highly coextensive among the three maternal traits, but areas of divergence exhibited intriguing parallels with behavioral outcomes.
Conclusions: Maternal personality traits are an important aspect of the infant environment that shapes offspring development in many ways. Infant genes that are epigenetically modified in reponse to maternal traits are potential candidate mediators for these effects. We have identified a large number of such genes and demonstrated parallels to clinically measurable outcomes in children.
ABOUT
Dr. Robakis is a psychiatrist with clinical and research interests in perinatal mood disorders and in the contribution of early life experiences to adult mental health and illness. She completed her M.D. as well as a Ph.D. in developmental neurobiology at Columbia University’s Medical Scientist Training Program, residency training in psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, and a research fellowship in perinatal mood disorders also at Stanford. She remained on the clinical faculty at Stanford until 2019, when she accepted a position at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she is currently Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Assistant Director of the Women’s Mental Health Program.
Dr. Robakis’ research interests include the effects of early life stress and disordered attachment on risk for psychiatric illness in the perinatal period, on alterations in metabolism and cognition, and on psychobehavioral development in offspring. She is particularly interested in using epigenetic marks to help identify the biological pathways through which early life experiences exert their effects on outcomes in adulthood and intergenerationally.
Hosted by: Garry Gold, M.D.
Sponsored by the PHIND Center and the Department of Radiology