Ehlert
Fakultäten » Philosophische Fakultät » Psychologisches Institut » Klinische Psychologie und Psychotherapie » Prof. Dr. Ulrike Ehlert » Ehlert
Completed research project
| Title / Titel | Psychobiological stress reactivity in pregnant women | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract (PDF, 14 KB) | |||||||
| Summary / Zusammenfassung | Many different factors can contribute to complications during human pregnancy. Pathologic processes such as gestational hypertension, preeclampsia or the early onset of spontaneous labor occur in 9 – 15% of all pregnancies. The etiological factors of such complications remain unclear in up to 50% of all pathologies. Recent literature suggests that the course of pregnancy and birth outcome is influenced by the experience of stressful events. In particular psychosocial stress seems to increase the risk of pathological pregnancy complications via psychoneuroendocrinological pathways. It is well known that hormones of the sympathoadrenal medullary (SAM) system such as norepinephrine (NE) and hormones of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis such as corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) are released from different brain regions as a consequence of subjectively experienced stress. Although different pharmacological and physical stress provocation procedures have been assessed in pregnant women in order to elucidate the influence of stress on the release of the aforementioned hormones, the results of these studies are highly inhomogenous. With regard to the association between psychosocial stress and hormonal dysregulations, which may result in pregnancy complications, it would seem necessary first of all to obtain reliable information about the hormonal response following stress at different times of pregnancy in healthy women. The immediate objective of the proposed study is to identify the psychosocial and hormonal responses to standardized psychosocial stress in pregnant women, as there is, as yet, a total lack of such studies in the literature. We plan to expose healthy pregnant females at the beginning of the second an third trimester of their pregnancy, and a control group of healthy non-pregnant women to a psychosocial stress test. Stress responses will be assessed by psychometrics, endocrine parameters from saliva samples (cortisol and alpha-amylase as an indirect indicator of NE), and heart rate as an additional parameter of the SAM system. From the data obtained we would expect to be able to produce much more detailed descriptions of psychobiological mechanisms of stress adaption during pregnancy. This knowledge may help to develop targeted hypotheses about hormonal dysregulations of stress-related hormones and the progression of such abnormalities with the progression of pregnancy. |
||||||
| Keywords / Suchbegriffe | pregnancy, hpa axis, sympatho-adreno-medullary system, stress | ||||||
| Project leadership and contacts / Projektleitung und Kontakte |
|
||||||
| Funding source(s) / Unterstützt durch |
SNF (Personen- und Projektförderung) |
||||||
| In collaboration with / In Zusammenarbeit mit |
|
||||||
| Duration of Project / Projektdauer | Dec 2003 to Dec 2005 |