Schedule of Events | Symposia

Fetal Exposure to Higher Maternal Inflammation is Associated with Lower Memory Capacities in Late Middle Life

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Linda Hoffman¹ (tuf72977@temple.edu), Emma Smith¹, Madeleine Pike¹, Ann Kring², Elizabeth Breen³, Barbara Cohn⁴, Piera Cirillo⁴, Nickilou Krigbaum⁴, Ashby Cogan², Bhakti Patwardhan², Ingrid Olson¹, Lauren Ellman¹; ¹Temple University, ²University of California, Berkeley, ³University of California-Los Angeles, ⁴Child Health and Development Studies

Maternal inflammation during pregnancy has been associated with negative psychiatric and cognitive outcomes for offspring. For instance, higher levels of prenatal inflammation are associated with neurocognitive disorders (e.g., autism spectrum disorder). The current study asks whether prenatal inflammation in the first two trimesters of gestation is associated with consequences for offsprings’ cognitive capacities over half a century later. Participants were 128 mother-offspring dyads from the Child Health and Developmental Studies cohort that had maternal first and second trimester (T1, T2) sera data for interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, IL-1RA, and soluble tumor necrosis factor receptor-II (sTNFRII). In a follow-up assessment during late midlife (ages 59-62), offspring underwent neuropsychological testing assessing global cognition, IQ, memory, motor ability, executive control, and attention. Spearman’s correlations were performed between cognition and prenatal cytokines from the first two trimesters. Multivariate analyses were also performed to control for factors surrounding the perinatal environment. There was a positive association between digit span backwards and T1 sTNFRII (rho=.18, p=.048*). Further, significant negative associations were identified between long-delay free recall on the CVLT-II and T2 interleukins- (ILs-) 6 (rho=-.26, p=.006**) and 8 (rho=-.30, p=.001**). After controlling for maternal education and economic burden index in the same model, only the association between IL-8 and memory performance remained significant. Our findings suggest that individuals exposed to high inflammation in the second trimester of pregnancy may have worse hippocampal-dependent memory, measurable more than half-a-century later. However, some inflammation in the first trimester may be protective for executive capacities in later life.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Development & aging