Biological Changes in Mothers Experiencing Postpartum Depression
Newly discovered biological changes in mothers who suffer postpartum depression may help explain the condition, yield long-sought treatments and let doctors identify those at risk even before their babies are born. The findings were published in Molecular Psychiatry.
Postpartum depression strikes up to 20% of new mothers, and roughly 20% of maternal deaths after childbirth are from suicide. Postpartum depression can cause anxiety and irritability, feelings of self-doubt and difficulty bonding with the baby, cognitive impairment, and interfering with sleeping and eating. For the child, maternal postpartum depression can lead to cognitive, emotional and social development problems.
Risk factors for postpartum depression are thought to include the mother’s age at childbirth, diabetes and prior history of mental health issues. But the new discovery suggests a previously unknown biological contributor: an impairment of the body’s ability to clean up old genetic material and other cellular debris.
“The finding that cells aren’t cleaning out old proteins and cellular debris, called autophagy, occurs before women develop depression symptoms, indicating that it could be part of the disease process,” explained Jennifer L. Payne, MD, director of the Reproductive Psychiatry Research Program at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. “There are several medications that promote autophagy in cells, so this finding might open the door to new treatments and to identification of women at risk of postpartum depression before they become ill.”
Understanding Postpartum Depression
Dr Payne and colleagues wanted to determine if ‘extracellular RNA communication’, a newly discovered form of communication among cells, might contribute to postpartum depression. Extracellular RNA communication is heightened during pregnancy and is critical in embryo implantation and in the body’s inflammatory response afterward.
The researchers analysed blood plasma samples from 14 research participants with and without postpartum depression, collected during and after their pregnancies. The researchers found that extracellular RNA communication in immune cells was altered extensively in women who suffered postpartum depression. Further, they determined that this “large and consistent” change significantly limited the women’s bodies’ ability to perform important cellular cleanup – suggesting a potential biological cause for their depression.
“Deficits in autophagy are thought to cause toxicity that may lead to the changes in the brain and body associated with depression,” Dr Payne said. “We have never fully understood the biological basis for postpartum depression, and this finding gets us closer to an understanding.”
