Mid-pregnancy pollution exposure linked to postpartum depression

Around 10% of people in Europe suffer from depression after giving birth, experiencing symptoms that include sadness, agitation, and difficulty concentrating. For such a common condition — and one that has been linked to poorer outcomes for both the baby and the parent — postpartum depression has been relatively under-studied, write the authors of new work in Science of the Total Environment. In a bid to help address this, they ran a detailed study of one proposed risk factor — exposure to air pollution during pregnancy. Yuhong Hu at the University of California and colleagues studied 361 women from the start of their pregnancies. These women were predominantly low-income and mostly Hispanic/Latina women living in Los Angeles. The team gathered weekly data on levels of air pollution near their homes, as well as the women's levels of depressive symptoms over time. One year on from giving birth, overall, measures showed that 17.8% of these women were suffering from postpartum depressio ... Read full article.