No abstract

Although replication is warranted, to our knowledge, this is the first evidence linking maternal prenatal anxiety and stress to infant illnesses and antibiotic use early in life.

As suggested by the results, it can be concluded that high-quality caring relationships contribute to the need fulfillment of residents and their well-being. The quality of caring relationships is thus an important topic for further research. The field may especially benefit from longitudinal studies and studies that use observations of the caring relationship in addition to self-reports.

Maternal prenatal psychosocial stress is associated with altered child emotional and behavioral development. One potential underlying mechanism is that prenatal psychosocial stress affects child outcomes via the mother’s, and in turn the child’s, intestinal microbiota. This study investigates the first step of this mechanism: the relation between psychosocial stress and fecal microbiota in pregnant mothers. Mothers (N = 70) provided a late pregnancy stool sample and filled in questionnaires on general and pregnancy-specific stress and anxiety. Bacterial DNA was extracted and analysed by Illumina HiSeq sequencing of PCR-amplified 16 S ribosomal RNA gene fragments. Associations between maternal general anxiety and microbial composition were found. No associations between the other measured psychosocial stress variables and the relative abundance of microbial groups were detected. This study shows associations between maternal pregnancy general anxiety and microbial composition, providing first evidence of a mechanism through which psychological symptoms in pregnancy may affect the offspring.

: This study is the first in showing that attachment at 12 months of age is related to infant night waking patterns in the first 6 months of life. Patterns of infant night wakings early in life apparently reflect the emerging attachment relationship.