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New Delhi: Placenta health during late pregnancy could influence a child’s risk of developing ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a new study has found.
Researchers, including those from the US’ University of Iowa, found that low levels of placental growth factor (PlGF) — an important biomarker of placental health during pregnancy — in the third trimester were associated with a higher risk of ADHD diagnosis in children.
“This study adds to the evidence that neurodevelopmental risk begins in utero and suggests that the placenta may play a major role in shaping neurodevelopmental outcomes,” says Serena (Banu) Gumuslogu, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and psychiatry at the University of Iowa, and first author on the study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Psychiatry.
“It raises the exciting possibility that factors known to be related to pregnancy and maternal health, like PlGF, may also tell us something about how the baby’s brain is developing,” Gumuslogu said.
The placenta is responsible for supplying blood and nutrients to the baby, and removing waste and protecting against toxins or viral and bacterial exposures.
Placental growth factor, or PlGF, is a key protein made by placenta that is also a marker of the temporary organ’s health. Low levels of PlGF are a known warning sign for pregnancy complications, including preeclampsia.
The team used maternal blood samples banked from 176 pregnancies in the department of obstetrics and gynecology’s Perinatal Family Tissue Bank to investigate whether levels of PlGF were also related to risk for ADHD years later.
PlGF levels were measured from the samples collected during all three trimesters of these pregnancies. The blood samples were then linked to health records of the offspring, allowing the team to track which pregnancies resulted in ADHD diagnoses and which did not.
“In pregnancies that resulted in a child later diagnosed with ADHD, we saw that PlGF levels did not have the typical increase in the third trimester,” Gumusoglu said.
“Our findings highlight a potential role of the placenta-brain axis in ADHD and suggest that impaired placental function, including deficiencies in growth and vascularisation during late gestation, may contribute to early-life mechanisms of atypical neurodevelopment,” the authors wrote.
