Inherited predisposition to stillbirth: an intergenerational analysis of 26,788 mother-daughter pairs

Previous evidence suggests that placental dysfunction, which includes preeclampsia, is inherited from mother to daughter, but heritability of stillbirth has never been investigated.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there is an inherited predisposition to stillbirth that is transmitted from mother to daughter.

We carried out a nested case-control study within the intergenerational cohort held in the Aberdeen Maternity and Neonatal Databank. All mothers who had at least 1 daughter in Aberdeen, United Kingdom, between 1949 and 2000 were included. Mother-daughter pairs were linked with the use of the Scottish Community Health Index number. The main exposure was the mother's history of stillbirth. The primary outcome was stillbirth in any of the daughter's pregnancies. A population average model that used generalized estimating equations with robust standard errors was used to estimate odds of a mother's history of stillbirth in daughters with a stillbirth compared with daughters with only livebirths. This method accounted for clustering of daughters within mothers, and multi-adjusted analyses were performed to include confounders at the daughter's pregnancy level.

Among the daughters, 384 had a history of ≥1 stillbirths (cases); 26,404 only ever had livebirths (control subjects). We found no statistically significant association between mothers' history of stillbirth (adjusted odds ratio, 0.63; 95% confidence interval, 0.24-1.63) or miscarriage (adjusted odds ratio, 1.01; 95% confidence interval, 0.71-1.42) and stillbirth in daughters.

This is the first study to investigate an inherited predisposition to stillbirth. There was no evidence of an inherited predisposition to stillbirth transmitted from mother to daughter.