Stress and Immune Function during Pregnancy: An Emerging Focus in Mind-Body Medicine

Maternal psychosocial stress during pregnancy is associated with risks to maternal health, birth outcomes, as well as adverse health and behavioral outcomes in offspring. Maternal immune dysregulation, particularly disruption of inflammatory processes, is also implicated in adverse perinatal health outcomes, with the greatest evidence in relation to preterm birth. Increasingly, the extent to which psychosocial stress induces dysregulation of inflammatory processes during pregnancy is being considered. In this article, I describe studies linking stress to immune function during pregnancy, with an emphasis on studies from our group on inflammation. As will be reviewed, research utilizing psychoneuroimmunology models in pregnancy is a rapidly developing area with abundant opportunities to address questions of clinical relevance for both maternal and child health.