Project Summary

Elizabeth Jane Costello, Ph.D. (Distinguished Investigator 2007) of Duke University, aims to further understand the relationship of female adolescent depression to low birthweight (LBW), the functioning of the hypothalamo-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) and hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axes, adrenal androgens, and psychosocial stress. She has been studying since 1993, a sample of 1,420 children in whom 6 percent of the girls were LBW. Of these, 38 percent had a depressive disorder between 13 and 16. This excess risk to LBW girls was not present before puberty, and was not explained by the association of LBW with other adversities of the perinatal period, childhood, or adolescence. As such, she is seeking NARSAD funding to add to her current NIH grant to extend and analyze her assays of pubertal hormones, in order to have power to link interrelated bodies of work, by her and others, that point to complex relationships among LBW, puberty, stress, and depression.

Program Area: MOOD DISORDERS\Unipolar

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