Peñalver Bernabé uses grant to understand pathobiology of perinatal depression in women of color
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Depression during pregnancy and/or up to one year postpartum, otherwise known as perinatal depression, affects 6.5% to 12.9% of women, with double the rates in women of color, according to previous research published in the Archives of Women’s Mental Health journal by a team of researchers including Richard and Loan Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering Assistant Professor Beatriz Peñalver Bernabé. Women of color also face higher rates of mortality and morbidity due to mental health conditions.
A woman’s whole body changes throughout pregnancy, and that includes their gut microbiota. Changes in chemical compounds such as reproductive hormones, stress hormones, and neurosteroids can be regulated by the gut microbiota, which may affect maternal mental health during the perinatal period via the gut-brain axis.
Along with a team of other UIC researchers, Peñalver Bernabé recently received an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health to understand the role of the gut microbiota during pregnancy and post-partum as it relates to depression.
“During pregnancy, women’s hormonal profiles are changing, and the gut microbiota changes, so we wanted to know whether we would observe a difference between the gut microbiome during pregnancy for the individuals who are experiencing high levels of depression versus those that don’t,” Peñalver Bernabé said.
“Women who don’t have healthy coping mechanisms tend to have a less robust microbiota, whereas women with healthy coping mechanisms have a more robust microbiota,” Peñalver Bernabé said. “There are also existing stereotypes that push women to deal with stress without those healthy coping mechanisms.”
Unlike previous studies that have begun later in pregnancy, their longitudinal study will follow women in early pregnancy through the post-partum using a holistic approach focusing on the body of the mother, whereas other studies have followed the mother’s pregnancy and then the baby post-partum.
In the initial studies, Peñalver Bernabé and her team have seen that some women have high levels of depression, but the initial study had a small sample size, so this grant will enable them to expand their studies. They are planning on not only looking at the active microbiome, but also a whole-body study in which they also measure the metabolism levels in the bloodstream and stool, the immune system, diet, physical activity, and sleep activity. Patients in this study will wear a Fitbit to track and measure these levels. She and her team are using machine learning, which basically captures all approaches using disparate data to predict who is depressed or not and who is at risk of developing depression later.
Peñalver Bernabé and her team are also using a germ-free mouse model to determine the causal role of gut microbiota in symptom severity. More specifically, they utilized fecal microbiota transplants into these germ-free mice. Some of the mice, as a result, have shown changes in their behavior from these transplants that alter the neurological system as well as behavior, which can tell of how women’s gut microbiota change and the probability of developing depression.
She noted that many of their study participants from UIC clinics enjoy working with them. These participants are a unique population as most are women of color on Medicaid or Medicare, may also come from communities where they don’t have good access to health care, and may be living in under-resourced communities, all of which can contribute to the higher rates of depression because of these environmental factors.
She said that her interest in women’s health research began during her PhD, and she began to dive into how the microbiome works for her postdoc research. During that time, it was her own pregnancy that led to her wanting to understand the gut-brain axis connection and the prevalence of mood disorders in pregnancy.
Peñalver Bernabé’s team of researchers from throughout UIC includes the departments of psychiatry, psychology, obstetrics and gynecology, nutrition and kinesiology, and medicine.
No results have been published yet.