Researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Columbia University Irving Medical Center have shown that pregnant women with anxiety have immune systems that are biologically different from pregnant women without anxiety.
The research, published Sept. 14 in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, shows that anxious pregnant women have greater concentrations of cytotoxic T cells, immune cells that go after diseased or otherwise damaged body cells. Immunological blood circulation markers also behaved differently in anxious women. This is the first research that evaluates how anxiety affects the course of immunological changes during pregnancy and the postpartum period.
Lead researcher Dr. Lauren M. Osborne, vice chair of clinical research in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Weill Cornell Says “Women with anxiety appear to have an immune system that behaves differently than healthy women during pregnancy and postpartum, During pregnancy, there is supposed to be a delicate dance in which the immune system changes so that it doesn’t reject the fetus, but is still strong enough to ward off foreign pathogens”.
Medicine, who conducted research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. This study could support better treatment of anxiety in pregnant patients, said Dr. Osborne, who is also a reproductive psychiatrist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. As a clinician, she finds that women with anxiety may resist taking anti-anxiety medication because they fear the medication will harm the baby, despite evidence that it is compatible with pregnancy.
Anxiety during pregnancy, which researchers say is reported by more than 20 percent of people, is already known to harm both parent and child. For example, it can increase the risk of premature birth and lower birth weight of the newborn.
For this study Dr. Osborne and her colleagues evaluated a group of 107 pregnant women, 56 with anxiety and 51 without anxiety, during the second and third trimesters and six weeks postpartum. The researchers assessed blood samples for immune activity and conducted psychological assessments to detect clinical anxiety.
They found that in women with anxiety, levels of cytotoxic T-cells were increased during pregnancy and then decreased in the weeks after delivery. In women without anxiety, the activity of these cells decreased during pregnancy and further decreased after childbirth.
The researchers also observed that the activity of predominantly pro-inflammatory cytokines, or substances secreted by cells as part of the immune system response, was suppressed during pregnancy in women with anxiety and then increased after delivery, while healthy women showed the opposite pattern.
“As a result, this is the first clear evidence that immune activity varies in pregnant women depending on their anxiety state. “Knowing that the immune system is involved is the first step toward understanding the biological factors involved in pregnancy anxiety and the first step toward developing new treatments,” said Dr. Osborne. “We know that anxiety needs to be treated to ensure healthy outcomes for both mother and baby.”
