The link between perinatal depression and DNA methylation of the oxytocin receptor gene: a study of mothers and their children
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: There is mounting evidence to suggest that exposure to stress during critical periods of development may increase one's susceptibility to disease risk, including depression. Perinatal depression (PD) may not only be associated with adverse outcomes among the mothers experiencing it, but also for the children exposed to PD, via epigenetic programming. We sought to investigate how PD may be associated with certain epigenetic profiles among mother and child dyads. Specifically, we focused on the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene due to oxytocin's role in maternal behavior and stress regulation. It is hypothesized that increased OXTR methylation will be observed for those mothers who experience PD and among those children exposed to PD. Methods: Using longitudinal data from a cohort of mothers and their infants, we collected information about the mothers' depressive symptomology across 5 time points (twice during pregnancy and three times during the postpartum period). Depressive symptomology was assessed using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and four groups were established based on EPDS cut-off scores: no PD, prenatal or postpartum depression only and persistent PD (depression both prenatally and postpartum). DNA methylation was assessed using saliva obtained from both mother and child at the last time point – 2.9 years postpartum, for which the OXTR gene was interrogated for methylation patterns. Results: Those mothers with persistent PD had significantly higher OXTR methylation overall compared to the other groups. Specifically, 9 of the 22 CpG sites interrogated were significantly higher for the persistent PD group. However, average OXTR methylation among those children who were exposed to their mothers' persistent PD were not significantly different when compared to the other groups, with none of the 22 sites investigated within the exon 3 region showing significantly different methylation patterns. Discussion: For mothers, only persistent PD was associated with significantly higher OXTR methylation suggesting that more transient episodes of depression may not impact the epigenome to the same degree. The children's methylation profiles were not consistently associated with their mothers' depression. Given the link found between persistent PD and OXTR methylation among mothers, the combined psychological and epigenetic risk may have implications for the oxytocin system as well as compromise maternal behavior which may result in negative outcomes for the developing child.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".