Do pregnancy-related risk factors cause psychopathology? The importance of family-based designs

Previous research has found that pregnancy-related risk factors (e.g., maternal smoking, maternal stress, fetal growth restriction, preterm birth, etc.) are associated with offspring neurodevelopmental problems. These results have led researchers to make strong causal inferences, consistent with the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease Hypothesis. Yet, great skepticism remains about whether the early exposures truly have causal effects because most human research has been unable to rule out alternative explanations for the associations, particularly the role of unmeasured genetic and environmental confounding. The presentation will highlight how combining several family-based designs (e.g., comparing differentially exposed siblings, cousins, and offspring of twins) and statistical methods can help answer important public health questions about pregnancy-related risk factors.

Speaker: Brian D'Onofrio, Indiana University