A woman’s stress during her pregnancy can increase her child’s Obesity Risk
A woman’s stress during her pregnancy and breast-feeding may cause changes in her infant's genes that increase the child's risk of obesity later in life, to such conclusion came researchers after their study in mice.
When mice in the study have been subjected under stress during pregnancy, their posterity became faster after weaning than has made posterity of non-stressed mice. After two months, the posterity of stressed mice developed belly fat and preliminary diabetes, a condition characterized by abnormally high blood sugar levels.
The researchers think the mother's stress causes changes by neuropeptide Y, a brain neurotransmitter, behaves. Neuropeptide Y stimulates appetite and can cause the formation and growth of fat cells. Stress may cause modifications of the posterity which increase the activity of neuropeptide Y, and in turn, increase the number of fat cells in the body.
The number of fat cells which the person has before they reach their teenage years is the main determinant of his or her risk for obesity, said study researcher Ruijun Han, of the University of Minnesota Medical School's Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology. "Thus intervention during pregnancy and childhood could be in the effective way to prevent adult obesity," Han said.
But somehow a lot of work needed to be done to define whether stress produces the same influences in people.
Only female posterity in the study seemed affected by the mother's stress in pregnancy. The researchers are not assured why this is, but it can be because fatty tissue is more important for women in producing posterity later, Han said.
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