Research Recap with Skye: Maternal Inflammation
Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our Research Recap series. In this series, we look at a single research paper, dive into what it says and how it was conducted, and try to find practical takeaways.
In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Evaluation of Maternal Inflammation as a Marker of Future Offspring ADHD Symptoms: A Prospective Investigation." This study investigates the biological origins of ADHD—specifically, whether a mother's immune system during pregnancy might be able to predict ADHD symptoms in her children once they are born.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at https://HackingYourADHD.com/276
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William Curb: Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD. I'm your host, William Curb, and I have ADHD. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Today, I'm joined by Skye Waterson for our Research Recap series. In this series, we look at a single research paper, dive into what it says and how it was conducted, and try to find practical takeaways.
In this episode, we're going to be discussing a paper called "Evaluation of Maternal Inflammation as a Marker of Future Offspring ADHD Symptoms: A Prospective Investigation." This study investigates the biological origins of ADHD—specifically, whether a mother's immune system during pregnancy might be able to predict ADHD symptoms in her children once they are born.
It’s a pretty dense paper. There was a lot here, so let's get into it.
Skye Waterson: Yeah. And I will say, this is why I love doing this, Will. I so much appreciate that you are willing to go into these denser papers with me. I want to say upfront that we are not experts in the medical field, and this particular paper is very preliminary.
The study specifically references that its purpose is to decide what needs to be studied more in depth. They looked at 68 children from 62 women who were pregnant in an outpatient clinic. Basically, they wanted to understand if biomarkers for inflammation in the second trimester were connected to symptoms of ADHD—not necessarily an ADHD diagnosis—later in life. They looked at reports from both teachers and the parents themselves. This was more of a longitudinal study; it took quite a long time.
William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. I was really impressed that they were looking at data from the mother during pregnancy and then following up with the children after they were born to see what symptoms were present. You have to look at those before-and-after effects, and that is a long-term commitment.
Skye Waterson: A hundred percent. When they were doing those initial measures, they were measuring things like maternal distress, which can affect inflammation, and they did try to control for some of those factors. They were also testing blood samples to understand what the inflammation looked like.
They noted they couldn't draw the blood samples at the same time of day for all participants. We know that inflammation can change due to many factors, including the time of day. I wanted to zoom out here a little bit, Will, and actually ask for those listening: we’ve all heard of inflammation, but what is it? What are we actually looking for?
William Curb: Yeah, because as a pop culture reference, there are all sorts of things about inflammation that are less than scientifically accurate. Specifically for this study, they were collecting blood samples and looking at cytokine levels. But to your question, defining "inflammation" simply without getting into specific levels is tough. Essentially, it’s your immune system being reactive to what’s going on.
Skye Waterson: Exactly. They measured cytokine levels, which are essentially small proteins used by the body’s systems to communicate. They were trying to measure these as a part of predicting both whether there was inflammation and whether that inflammation was related to later ADHD symptoms.
They did find a relationship, which is interesting because it indicates a potential association. This was one of the first times I've looked into this, and I was interested because I’ve heard there could be a relationship that isn't purely genetic. However, I have to admit I’ve been a little biased against the idea of non-genetic associations because it feels like that argument is often used in bad faith.
William Curb: Yeah, often it’s used to blame the parents for how a kid turned out—like, "Oh, you didn't feed them enough broccoli, and now they have ADHD." It’s often just bad faith from people trying to sell you a supplement to "cure" ADHD.
Skye Waterson: Exactly. As I was saying to Will, I just recently had my third baby. The conversation about being calm and healthy is always part of the pregnancy experience. But it’s nine months! The chances that I’m going to be relaxed and "uninflamed" for a whole nine months is a big ask.
William Curb: Yeah, and that’s an important thing to consider with this study. They didn't have a lot of tests during the pregnancy; it was just one test during the third trimester. While that might be great for looking at chronic inflammation, if you’re just having a very stressful day getting to the hospital, you might be having an acute immune response right then.
Skye Waterson: Exactly. You’re doing a bunch of tests, there’s a lot going on, and if you have toddlers—like I do—that creates a bit more stress compared to having a first baby. There are so many different pieces that could affect the results.
To their credit, the researchers recognized that. They stated this research is important because ADHD is so "costly" and "difficult to alter." Evaluating the merits of deeper research—which would require more testing over time—is necessary. I’m curious what this would mean. If a deeper study found a serious connection between inflammation and ADHD, what would change?
William Curb: It would likely change the recommendations we give to expectant mothers. We already have recommendations for folate and prenatal vitamins; perhaps adding anti-inflammatory support could be something they suggest.
Again, we’re not looking at an ADHD diagnosis here, but rather symptoms. The goal would be to reduce the chance of those symptoms being a significant part of their development, because we all know ADHD is hard.
Skye Waterson: Yeah, and you do get more criticism and struggle more in a classroom if you have ADHD symptoms. We could talk about whether that means we should change the classroom instead, but that's a conversation for another day.
William Curb: One interesting piece I thought about was the idea of epigenetics. Even if it's "non-genetic" in the traditional sense, environmental factors like inflammation can influence gene expression—essentially "turning on" certain genes. If we see this inflammation connection, maybe there are things we can do later in life to change how those genes are expressed as an adult.
Skye Waterson: A hundred percent. The study said maternal inflammation predicted teacher reports of child ADHD symptoms at a significant level. It feels wild because those two things are so far apart in time. Given the small sample size, they could have easily found a non-significant result.
I hope that if they do more of this research, they don’t just make it "another thing" that moms have to deal with. As someone who had a baby last year, adding more pressure wouldn't be helpful.
William Curb: Yeah, because often these findings just turn into: "Moms need to do all these things, and if you don't, you're a bad mom." That just makes things more stressful, which probably doesn't help the inflammation!
Skye Waterson: You probably increase inflammation just by having that conversation! I definitely hope that if they find a solid link, it comes with a systems-based solution.
William Curb: Is there anything else we want to jump into on this one?
Skye Waterson: I think this is the first time we’ve looked at things "below the brain"—looking at the body and the role of inflammation. It’s an area that gets misrepresented to the point where you don't know what to believe. My takeaway is: if you’re struggling with ADHD, keep this in mind, but don’t hold onto it too tightly. It’s still a very emerging space.
William Curb: Yeah, I think we will eventually see more definitive findings here, but what those will be is hard to predict.