What is your chance of developing postpartum depression? This is a question most women are eager to find answers for even before getting pregnant or during pregnancy, if possible. And it is possible now, thanks to researchers at the University of California, Irvine, who suggest that women who have higher levels of a hormone produced by the placenta midway through their pregnancy are more likely to develop postpartum depression.
Postpartum depression, also known as postnatal depression, is a form of clinical depression, which can affect women after childbirth. Symptoms of postpartum depression can occur anytime in the first year postpartum and include, but are not limited to, the following: sadness, hopelessness, low self-esteem, guilt, sleep disturbances, inability to be comforted, exhaustion, emptiness, inability to enjoy things one previously enjoyed, social withdrawal, low energy and feeling inadequate in taking care of the baby.
According to a survey of about 52,000 new moms made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and released in April last year, the most affected by postpartum depression seemed to be teenage mothers with less than 12 years of education, Medicaid patients, smokers, victims of physical abuse before or during pregnancy and women under financial stress during pregnancy. Their chance of developing postpartum depression ranged between 13 percent and 21 percent.
Now, researchers at the University of California say levels of a hormone produced by the placenta, known as placental corticotrophin-releasing hormone (pCRH), can predict a woman’s chance of developing postpartum depression.
For the study, lead researchers Ilona S. Yim, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues took blood samples from 100 pregnant women at two medical centers in California at 15, 19, 25, 31 and 37 weeks of pregnancy and tested for levels of pCRH, as well as cortisol, a tress hormone, and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which triggers the release of cortisol.
The researchers also looked for signs of depression during pregnancy and about eight weeks, on average, after giving birth.
Overall, 16 women developed postpartum depression. The study found that in each case, the women had had high levels of pCRH at 25 weeks into their pregnancies. The blood test could identify about 75 percent of women who would develop postpartum depression and misclassified about 25 percent of the women.
If the findings are confirmed, this hormonal test may become standard care, Yim said.
“Postpartum depression affects so many women that it would be great to have something that would help to identify being at risk early on, and perhaps, develop strategies to prevent it,” Yim added.
Postpartum depression should be addressed from the very first signs, researchers believe, because women developing it can become so despondent they attempt suicide, and some harm or neglect their babies.
The findings are published in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.
