The role of maternal anxiety and depressive disorders prior to and during pregnancy and perinatal psychopathological symptoms for early infant diseases and drug administration

These results have to be discussed with caution, because information on infants' diseases were based exclusively on maternal self-reports. However, they suggest promising directions regarding our current knowledge about the relevance of maternal perinatal distress for infant inflammatory diseases (e.g. fetal programming). Moreover, the association between maternal anxiety and depressive disorders and infant gastrointestinal complaints may be explained by an anxious misinterpretation of 'normal' infant signals or a transmission of adverse gut microbiota, respectively.