B2597 - Maternal smoking during pregnancy and offspring depression - 14/01/2016

B number: 
B2597
Principal applicant name: 
Amy Taylor | School of Experimental Psychology
Co-applicants: 
Marcus Munafo
Title of project: 
Maternal smoking during pregnancy and offspring depression
Proposal summary: 

Maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with a number of psychological problems in offspring including depression but it is not clear whether this is due to intrauterine exposure to tobacco smoke or due to other lifestyle (confounding) factors. This project will compare associations of maternal smoking during pregnancy to those of paternal smoking during pregnancy with offspring depression measured at 18 years. Maternal and paternal smoking during pregnancy should be similarly associated with lifestyle and demographic factors. However, paternal smoking during pregnancy will expose the foetus to much lower levels of tobacco exposure than active smoking by the mother. Therefore if there is an intrauterine effect on depression, we would expect to see much stronger associations with maternal smoking than with paternal smoking.

Date proposal received: 
Thursday, 10 December, 2015
Date proposal approved: 
Wednesday, 16 December, 2015
Keywords: 
Mental health - Psychology, Psychiatry, Cognition, Addiction - e.g. alcohol, illicit drugs, smoking, gambling, etc., Mental health, Statistical methods, Methods - e.g. cross cohort analysis, data mining, mendelian randomisation, etc.