Epigenetic signatures of attachment insecurity and childhood adversity provide evidence for role transition in the pathogenesis of perinatal depression.

ABSTRACT: Early life adversity and insecure attachment style are known risk factors for perinatal depression. The biological pathways linking these experiences, however, have not yet been elucidated. We hypothesized that overlap in patterns of DNA methylation in association with each of these phenomena could identify genes and pathways of importance. Specifically, we wished to distinguish between allostatic-load and role-transition hypotheses of perinatal depression. We conducted a large-scale analysis of methylation patterns across 5 × 10⁶ individual CG dinucleotides in 54 women participating in a longitudinal prospective study of perinatal depression, using clustering-based criteria for significance to control for multiple comparisons. We identified 1580 regions in which methylation den

SUBMITTER: Robakis TK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7026105 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature