Annamaria Cattaneo

Fatebenefratelli Institute, Italy

Abstract Title: Impact of Stress in pregnancy on maternal and offspring behaviors: the key role of immune system and placenta functioning

Biography: Annamaria Cattaneo is Assistant Professor at the University of Milan and she is also heading the Laboratory of Biological Psychiatry, at the IRCCS Fatebenefratelli Institute, where she is also Deputy Scientific Directors. She coordinates different projects aimed at the identification of predictors for the development of mood disorders and of treatment response. She is particularly interested in perinatal psychiatry, evaluating how stress early in life or exposure to depression in utero can shape the brain trajectory. She has more than 134 publications in PubMed, leading to SCOPUS H-Index = 48, and more than 8200 citations. Dr Cattaneo received several Awards including the prestigious Rafaelsen Young Investigator’s Award.

Research Interest: Stress during gestation is well recognized as a significant factor that increases the risk of developing depressive symptoms in mothers with consequences also on the offspring. Precise biological pathways dysregulated by stress during gestation, which may contribute to the development of such dysfunctions in mothers and to negative outcomes in the offspring still require more knowledge, although abnormal central and peripheral inflammatory responses have been reported, alongside with placental dysfunction. I will discuss data from pregnant dams exposed to stress during the last week of gestation and euthanized either on the last day of gestation or 21 days postpartum to examine short- and long-term stress-related consequences. Stressed pregnant rats exhibited enhanced inflammatory status at peripheral and central levels, along with metabolic alterations and Hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis dysregulations. Moreover, stressed mothers showed significant impaired ability in maternal care, which correlated with altered levels of oxytocin. Stress experienced by mothers during pregnancy also affected placental morphology and functioning, via inflammatory responses, suggesting an important role of placenta in mediating the negative effect of stress exposure in pregnancy on the offspring. Overall, these data are crucial for a better understanding of the biological mechanisms disrupted by stress during pregnancy that may have mental health consequences for women during this sensitive life stage and that could also explain an enhanced risk for the offspring to develop negative outcomes. Interventions targeting those mechanisms could be also able to shape the neurodevelopmental trajectories in the offspring, reducing their risk for altered behaviors.