Maternal psychophysiology profiles: associations with prenatal opioid use, maternal emotion dysregulation, and newborn neurobehavior

Background

Opioid use among pregnant women has more than quadrupled over the past 20 years; however, comorbid risk factors such as emotion dysregulation confound the developmental consequences of prenatal opioid use. Maternal respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) may help to disentangle the comorbid risk factors of prenatal emotion dysregulation and substance use and isolate their consequences on newborn neurobehavior.

Methods

We examined maternal RSA in response to a mild, infant-related stress task in pregnant people (N = 192; 30 on medications for opioid use disorder) recruited from hospitals and a specialty prenatal clinic for substance use disorder.

Results

Three latent profiles emerged based on maternal RSA reactivity. Mothers with RSA increasing (Profile 3; more nervous system dysregulation) had higher levels of emotion dysregulation than mothers with RSA decreasing (Profile 1; well-regulated nervous system responses) but were not more likely to use opioids. Additionally, RSA profiles were associated with newborn neurobehavior, including attention, regulation, handling, and arousal.

Conclusions

Given the variability in opioid use across RSA profiles and profile associations with newborn neurodevelopment, future studies should examine protective factors in pregnant individuals using opioids who show more flexible RSA responses.

Impact

Our study examined maternal psychophysiology and newborn outcomes in a unique population with high levels of emotion dysregulation and opioid use.

Three profiles of maternal respiratory sinus arrythmia (RSA) reactivity were identified during pregnancy: decreasing, blunted, and increasing.

The RSA increasing and blunted profiles were associated with higher emotion dysregulation than the decreasing profile.

Most pregnant people on medications for opioid use disorder (65%) were grouped into the blunted profile, suggesting they might be more at risk for dysregulated RSA reactivity.

Differences in RSA profiles were associated with newborn outcomes, with increasing and blunted RSA predicting more newborn neurobehavioral dysregulation.