Early Origins of Health Disparities: Material Deprivation Predicts Maternal Evening Cortisol in Pregnancy and Offspring Cortisol Reactivity in the First Few Weeks of Life

摘要

ObjectivesMaternal hypothalamic pituitary adrenal-axis function regulates production of the stress hormone cortisol, which during pregnancy can cross the placenta and have lasting impacts on fetal growth and development. This article provides a preliminary test of the hypothesis that a woman's socioeconomic status (SES) predicts her cortisol during pregnancy and her offspring's cortisol during the early postnatal period among an ethnically diverse sample in Auckland, New Zealand to evaluate whether differences in cortisol contribute to the intergenerational inheritance of health disparities within this population.