Pregnancy Stress Exposures and Postpartum Serum Metabolomic Profiles in Mothers

Background/Objectives: Women exposed to high psychosocial stress in pregnancy have higher risk of postpartum health conditions, but it still is unknown whether high pregnancy stress exposure alters the maternal metabolome at one-month postpartum. Methods: We analyzed data from 625 women participating in the PROGRESS study, a longitudinal pregnancy cohort. Women answered validated psychometric tests (i.e., EPDS, PSS and NLE) during the second or third trimester of pregnancy and provided serum samples at one-month postpartum for metabolomic assessment. Untargeted metabolomics were analyzed using chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS). We used a metabolome-wide association study, using both traditional robust regressions and variance tests, to evaluate associations between pregnancy psychosocial stress and one-month postpartum serum metabolomics. Results: We found a few nominally significant associations between prenatal psychosocial stress scores and the maternal metabolome. However, these findings did not remain after adjusting for multiple testing, with the only exception of epiandrosterone glucuronide, a steroid hormone metabolite, and lithocholyltaurine, a lipid-like molecule. Conclusions: We did not find significant associations between prenatal psychosocial stress and postpartum serum metabolomic profiles, except for two metabolites showing suggestive associations warranting further investigation.