Hardship during pregnancy has long-lasting effects on child

A lot can happen to a woman during pregnancy that impact the child prenatally, and these residual effects may persist long after birth. Several studies in the past have demonstrated that maternal stress in humans and other mammals cause epigenetic changes to occur in their offspring, often with lifelong consequences.

Research led by psychiatrist Suzanne King of McGill University suggests that a mother’s experience of stress during pregnancy may not be the deciding factor for how epigenetic mutations are conferred. Her study found that children of women from Québec, Canada who were pregnant during a five-day ice storm and massive power outage in January, 1998 had lower IQs, higher obesity rates, and were at a greater risk for diabetes thirteen years later, consistent with the mother’s objective level of hardship – days without electricity, financial loss, etc.

Surprisingly, the study found no connection between the mothers’ self-reported experience of distress during the ice storm and epigenetic mutations. In other words, it appears that the experience of hardship – not maternal stress – affects children’s epigenome during pregnancy.

“Our study showed the 1998 ice storm created sufficient hardship for pregnant women that it caused epigenetic changes in their unborn children that have lasted at least 13 years – that’s pretty permanent! No other study had previously shown epigenetic effects linked to objective hardship rather than subjective distress.”

These findings contradict the notion that the biological processes underlying stress cause epigenetic changes to occur in offspring prenatally. So what exactly is the cause? This is a puzzling question, and King’s research does not provide an answer. What it does suggest is that some factors affecting prenatal development might be completely beyond the mother’s control.

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