Perinatal Psychosocial Profiles and Offspring Longitudinal Cardiometabolic Risk Factors: A Latent Analysis Approach

Background/Objectives: Early-life exposures, including maternal psychosocial profile, can shape an individual’s lifelong development. There is growing interest in the effects of prenatal exposures on cardiometabolic health through childhood. The present study used latent profile analysis to identify psychosocial profiles among pregnant women by examining the co-occurrence of personality traits, anxiety, depression, and social capital and compared them with offspring health outcomes. Methods: Latent analysis identified three distinct psychosocial profiles for 638 participants from the Rhea cohort, following the use of multiple imputation techniques, based on a total analytic sample of 1340 participants. Results: The “Normative” profile (51.2%) had near-zero scores across all standardised psychosocial indicators, representing the baseline group. The “Resilient-Socially Resourced” profile (28.7%) was characterised by low anxiety, neuroticism, and prenatal depression, and high extraversion and social engagement. The “Psychosocially Vulnerable” profile (20.1%) exhibited high anxiety, neuroticism, and prenatal depression, with low extraversion and social connectedness. Associations between maternal psychosocial profiles and offspring cardiometabolic outcomes at ages 4, 7, and 11 years were generally weak and inconsistent. On the contrary, latent socioeconomic classes showed larger effects. Children of “Younger and socioeconomically vulnerable individuals” showed a three-fold higher risk of hypertension at age 4, compared to those from “Professional and well-resourced families”. Conclusions: Findings suggest that although distinct maternal psychosocial profiles can be identified, they may have limited influence on offspring cardiometabolic risk through mid-childhood. Further research is needed to clarify how psychosocial and socioeconomic exposures interact across the life course and influence offspring health trajectories.