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Prenatal anxiety during the pandemic context is related to neurodevelopment of 6-month-old babies

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Abstract

Prenatal anxiety and depression in pandemic context could introduce changes in the fetal developmental trajectories that, ultimately, could alter the adaptive behaviors of the offspring, potentially affecting, for example, general neurodevelopment. The sample consisted of 105 mother–child dyads, recruited between March and May 2020. The dyads were evaluated longitudinally, prenatally and postnatally (6 months). The Pandemic Impact Questionnaire, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Beck-II Depression Inventory were used to assess indicators of maternal anxiety and depression, respectively. Regarding the babies, their mothers responded to Age and Stages: 3, which assesses different dimensions of early neurodevelopment, in addition to a closed questionnaire to identify sociodemographic and maternal and child health variables. A series of mediation models were tested to examine the association between prenatal psychopathology/negative experiences of the pandemic and neurodevelopment. The results indicated that the negative experiences of the pandemic were indirectly associated with the socio-individual and fine motor neurodevelopment of the offspring, through maternal anxiety symptoms, during the third trimester, which functioned as a mediator.

  Conclusions: This study provides evidence on the mediating effects of maternal anxiety on infant neurodevelopment in contexts of early adversity. It is important to point out the need to implement public health policies that allow a timely evaluation of neurodevelopmental variables during early childhood, which can implement early interventions to reduce the risks associated with these deficits.

What is Known:

• Effects of maternal mental health have been reported, effects on child neurodevelopment, in motor, cognitive, linguistic and socio-emotional dimensions.

• Contexts of early adversity have been associated with maternal mental health and offspring development.

What is New:

• The context of pandemic adversity caused by COVID-19 is associated with motor and socio-individual neurodevelopment, mediated by maternal prenatal anxiety.

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Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and the authors will supply the relevant data in response to reasonable requests.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation of Argentina, under Grant IF-2020–37418385-APN-SSFCTEI#MCT. The funding source did not participate in the study design, collection, analysis, and interpretation of data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Psicología Básica Aplicada y Tecnología (IPSIBAT), Mar del Plata, Argentina

    Hernán López-Morales, Lorena Canet-Juric, Macarena Verónica del-Valle, Julieta Mariel Sosa, Marcela Carolina López & Sebastián Urquijo

  2. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata (UNMDP), Mar del Plata, Argentina

    Hernán López-Morales, Lorena Canet-Juric, Macarena Verónica del-Valle, Julieta Mariel Sosa, Marcela Carolina López & Sebastián Urquijo

  3. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Hernán López-Morales, Lorena Canet-Juric, Macarena Verónica del-Valle & Sebastián Urquijo

  4. Escuela Superior de Medicina, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Mar del Plata, Argentina

    Hernán López-Morales

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  1. Hernán López-Morales
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  5. Marcela Carolina López
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  6. Sebastián Urquijo
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Contributions

LMH: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, writing—original draft. US/MCL: writing—review and editing, resources, supervision, funding acquisition, project administration. MVDV/JMS: writing—review and editing. CJL: project administration, writing—review and editing, funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Hernán López-Morales.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethics approval

The procedures to be implemented were submitted to and approved by Bioethics Committee of the National University of Mar del Plata. The procedures recommended by the American Psychological Association, the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and those principles established by the International Convention on the Rights of the Child were considered.

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Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Marcela Carolina López and Sebastián Urquijo contributed equally to this work

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López-Morales, H., Canet-Juric, L., del-Valle, M.V. et al. Prenatal anxiety during the pandemic context is related to neurodevelopment of 6-month-old babies. Eur J Pediatr 182, 4213–4226 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00431-023-05112-y

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