Late Breaking Abstract - Maternal mental health during pregnancy and postnatally and wheeze and infections in offspring

A meta-analysis (Eur Respir J 2016) found an association between maternal mental health in pregnancy and wheeze in offspring. We aimed to disentangle the role of stress in pregnancy and postnatally on childhood wheeze, and to evaluate other outcomes related to infections in the Piccolipiu birth cohort (5 centers, Italy). Of the 3338 mothers-infants enrolled, 2382 were studied so far. Mental health was evaluated with the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)-12 filled in at the end of pregnancy and when the child was one year old. Past 12 months outcomes were ascertained at 24 months. GHQ12 includes 12 items, with four possible responses scored 0-3, that were summed (Likert score). We collapsed the scores into “Low” (u003c the upper tertile of the distribution) and “High” (above) and categorized maternal stress into: Low prenatal-Low postnatal (ref); High-Low; Low-High; High-High. The relationships between pre-postnatal stress and outcomes were assessed by multivariate logistic regression analyses adjusting for centres, maternal age, education, citizenship, asthma/atopy, BMI, smoking, parity, birth season and child sex. We found a relationship between maternal mental health in pregnancy and childhood wheeze and detected an association also with diseases due to infections, especially in mothers stressed in both periods.