Abstract
Objectives
Infant testosterone (T) surges early in life. This period (known as mini puberty) is crucial to development. Little is known as to what the ultimate function of mini puberty might be. We predicted that parents with putative endocrine signatures of challenging environments (elevated levels of maternal cortisol and paternal T) may be related to elevated levels of infant T. In turn, these endocrine relationships are hypothesized to influence infant growth.
Methods
In a U.S. sample (n = 225 families) of first-time parents and their infants, we measured infant length and weight at three occasions—birth, 3 months old, and 10 months old. We conducted salivary assays of infants for T, mothers for cortisol, and paternal T during the early postnatal period.
Results
We utilized latent growth curve modeling to explore changes in length and weight as predicted by infant T. Infant T predicted the slope of length gains across the study period. Maternal cortisol and paternal T (positively correlated with one another) were positively related to infant T. Neither maternal cortisol nor paternal T predicted the slope of length gains. In an exploratory model, temperament was not related to neuroendocrine measures. Gains in weight—unlike length—were not related to infant T.
Conclusions
The ultimate function of mini puberty in infant growth is nuanced. In addition—at a time of rapid hormone changes across mothers, fathers, and infants—our results suggest that a tripartite neuroendocrine relationship is conceivable. Discussion surrounds the potential role of mini puberty and the numerous limitations of the study.
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Notes
78.4% of all samples retrieved were collected within seven days of participant expectorating saliva. The range for retrieval was 15 days (1–16 days); this range does not include days waiting for participants who eventually withdrew before retrieval. There were no differences on study variables between samples picked up within 7 days or samples retrieved after 8 + days (all ps > .41).
In the intervening time since saliva was analyzed in the current study (2015–2016), the use of tandem mass spectrometry to measure testosterone has increased. EIA’s correlation with tandem mass spectrometry is unstable (Prasad et al., 2019; Welker et al., 2016) and there is ongoing debate as to the utility of using one method over the other (e.g., Mazur & Clifton, 2018). Because we did not utilize tandem mass spectrometry in the current study, our ability to contribute to this debate is limited.
Infant testosterone data also appears as an outcome variable in a published as a brief report in Corpuz, 2021.
There was no relationship between time of day and infant T in this sample (r = .10, p = .20). However, see “time since last feeding” below to view a significant relationship between infant T and “time since last feeding.”.
We used the CURVEFIT module in SPSS (SPSS v.26) to compare fit for the relationship between infant T and age at T collection. We did not find evidence that the curvilinear model (SE = 13.69) performed better than a linear model (SE = 13.65). This was verified by visual inspection of both models; CURVEFIT plots revealed a curvilinear model fit line that was nearly identical to the linear fit line. As a curiosity, we included age2 in base models for length (Model 1) and weight (Model 5). In both instances, age2 would have been eliminated (ps > .28) in subsequent models.
i.e., (1) no paths between infant T, slope, or intercept will be deleted/modified and (2) no “newly constructed” reconfiguration of initial covariates will be attempted despite possible improvements in fit.
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Funding
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (DGE-1144085; BCS-1147671) and the National Institutes of Health (R25HD090723-02).
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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [RC], upon reasonable request.
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Corpuz, R., D’Alessandro, S.E. & Moon, J.M. Maternal Cortisol and Paternal Testosterone Correlated with Infant Growth via Mini Puberty. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology 7, 403–431 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-021-00175-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-021-00175-3