Posts tagged pregnancy
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
Foetus suffers when mother lacks vitamin C
Maternal vitamin C deficiency during pregnancy can have serious consequences for the foetal brain. And once brain damage has occurred, it cannot be reversed by vitamin C supplements after birth. This is shown through new research at the University of Copenhagen just published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
Chronic Stress During Pregnancy Prevents Brain Benefits of Motherhood
(Credit: Oleg Zabielin / Shutterstock)
A new study in animals shows that chronic stress during pregnancy prevents brain benefits of motherhood, a finding that researchers suggest could increase understanding of postpartum depression.
Rat mothers showed an increase in brain cell connections in regions associated with learning, memory and mood. In contrast, the brains of mother rats that were stressed twice a day throughout pregnancy did not show this increase.
The researchers were specifically interested in dendritic spines – hair-like growths on brain cells that are used to exchange information with other neurons.
Previous animal studies conducted by lead author Benedetta Leuner of Ohio State University showed that an increase of dendritic spines in new mothers’ brains was associated with improved cognitive function on a task that requires behavioral flexibility – in essence, enabling more effective multitasking. The dendritic spines increased by about 20 percent in these brain regions in new mothers, according to her findings.
The stress in this new study negated those brain benefits of motherhood, causing the stressed rats’ brains to match brain characteristics of animals that had no reproductive or maternal experience.
The stressed rats also had less physical interaction with their babies than did unstressed rats, a behavior observed in human mothers who experience postpartum depression.
“Animal mothers in our research that are unstressed show an increase in the number of connections between neurons. Stressed mothers don’t,” said Leuner, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Ohio State and lead author of the study. “We think that makes the stressed mothers more vulnerable. They don’t have the capacity for brain plasticity that the unstressed mothers do, and somehow that’s contributing to their susceptibility to depression.”
(Source: newswise.com)
Cognitive reorganization during pregnancy and the postpartum period: An evolutionary perspective
Where the non-human animal research investigating reproduction-induced cognitive reorganization has focused on neural plasticity and adaptive advantage in response to the demands associated with pregnancy and parenting, human studies have primarily concentrated on pregnancy-induced memory decline. The current review updates Henry and Rendell’s 2007 meta-analysis, and examines cognitive reorganization as the result of reproductive experience from an adaptationist perspective. Investigations of pregnancy-induced cognitive change in human females may benefit by focusing on areas, such as social cognition, where a cognitive advantage would serve a protective function, and by extending the study duration beyond pregnancy into the postpartum period.
(Source: epjournal.net)
Mom’s High Blood Pressure in Pregnancy Could Affect Child’s IQ in Old Age
New research suggests that a mother’s high blood pressure during pregnancy may have an effect on her child’s thinking skills all the way into old age. The study is published in the October 3, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
“High blood pressure and related conditions such as preeclampsia complicate about 10 percent of all pregnancies and can affect a baby’s environment in the womb,” said study author Katri Räikönen, PhD, with the University of Helsinki in Finland. “Our study suggests that even declines in thinking abilities in old age could have originated during the prenatal period when the majority of the development of brain structure and function occurs.”
Researchers looked at medical records for the mother’s blood pressure in pregnancy for 398 men who were born between 1934 and 1944. The men’s thinking abilities were tested at age 20 and then again at an average age of 69. Tests measured language skills, math reasoning and visual and spatial relationships.
The study found that men whose mothers had high blood pressure while pregnant scored 4.36 points lower on thinking ability tests at age 69 compared to men whose mothers did not have high blood pressure. The group also scored lower at the age of 20 and had a greater decline in their scores over the decades than those whose mothers did not have problems with blood pressure. The finding was strongest for math-related reasoning.
The researchers also looked at whether premature birth affected these findings and found no change. Whether the baby’s father was a manual laborer or an office worker also did not change the results.
Male DNA in women’s brains could protect against Alzheimer’s
Researchers found that up to two thirds of women carry male DNA in their brain, which was most likely passed on to them while pregnant with sons.
The exact medical consequences of the transfer from foetus to mother remains unclear but a study showed it was less common in women who suffered from Alzheimer’s, suggesting that it could offer protection against the condition.
Previous studies insicate that similar processes of DNA transfer could raise the risk of some cancers, such as breast cancer, and lower the risk of others including cancer of the colon.
The new study of brain tissue taken from 59 women who died aged 32 to 101 found male DNA in 63 per cent of specimens.
The findings, published in the Public Library of Science ONE journal, also showed that the male DNA was less common in the parts of the brain most severely damaged by Alzheimer’s.
But the researchers, from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle, emphsaised that the small scale of the study and the lack of data on the women’s pregnancy history meant the evidence was not conclusive.
Dr William Chan, who led the project, said: “Currently, the biological significance of harbouring male DNA and male cells in the human brain requires further investigation.”
Vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy could hinder babies’ brain development, impeding their mental and motor skills, a new study suggests.
Researchers in Spain measured the level of vitamin D in the blood of almost 2,000 women in their first or second trimester of pregnancy and evaluated the mental and motor abilities of their babies at about 14 months of age. The investigators found that children of vitamin D-deficient mothers scored lower than those whose mothers had adequate levels of the sunshine vitamin.
"These differences in the mental and psychomotor development scores do not likely make any difference at the individual level, but might have an important impact at the population level," said study lead author Dr. Eva Morales, a medical epidemiologist in the Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona.
Overall, lower scores in these tests could lead to lower IQs among children, Morales added. The study was published online Sept. 17 and in the October print issue of the journal Pediatrics.
Imaging Study Sheds New Light on Alcohol-Related Birth Defects
A collaborative research effort by scientists at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Duke University, and University College of London in the UK, sheds new light on alcohol-related birth defects.
The project, led by Kathleen K. Sulik, PhD, a professor in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at UNC, could help enhance how doctors diagnose birth defects caused by alcohol exposure in the womb. The findings also illustrate how the precise timing of that exposure could determine the specific kinds of defects.
“We now know that maternal alcohol use is the leading known and preventable cause of birth defects and mental disability in the United States,” Sulik said. “Alcohol’s effects can cause a range of cognitive, developmental and behavioral problems that typically become evident during childhood, and last a lifetime.”
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is at the severe end of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). First described in 1972, FAS is recognized by a specific pattern of facial features: small eyelid openings, a smooth ridge on the upper lip (absence of a central groove, or philtrum), and a thin upper lip border.
In its full-blown state, FAS affects roughly 1 in 750 live births in the U.S. And while clinicians typically look for those classical facial features in making a diagnosis, within the broader classification of FASD “adverse outcomes vary considerably and most individuals don’t exhibit the facial characteristics that currently define FAS,” said the study’s lead author Robert J. Lipinski, PhD, a postdoctoral scientist in Sulik’s lab. “This study could expand the base of diagnostic criteria used by clinicians who suspect problems caused by maternal alcohol use.”
In their animal-based studies, the Sulik lab team has collaborated with co-author G. Allan Johnson, PhD and his group at Duke University’s Center for In Vivo Microscopy. Johnson, professor of radiology and physics, has developed new imaging tools with spatial resolution up to a million times higher than clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). These include small bore tools suitable for imaging fetal mice that are only 15 mm long.
To quantify facial shape from MRI data, the study team turned to co-author Peter Hammond, a professor of computational biology at UCL’s Institute of Child Health, in London. Hammond invented powerful new techniques for 3D shape analysis that have already proven successful in objectively defining facial shape changes in humans.
In the study, described in the August 22, 2012 issue of the online journal PLOS ONE, Lipinski and Sulik treated one group of mice with alcohol on their seventh day of pregnancy, a time corresponding to the third week of pregnancy in humans. A second group of mice was treated just 36 hours later, approximating the fourth week of human pregnancy. The amount of alcohol given was large, “high doses that most women wouldn’t achieve unless they were alcoholic and had a tolerance for alcohol,” Sulik said.
Near the end of pregnancy, the fetuses were then imaged at Duke University. These 3D data sets showed individual brain regions, as well as accurate and detailed facial surfaces, from which Hammond and research assistant and co-author Michael Suttie performed shape analyses.
The team found that the earlier alcohol exposure time elicited the classic FAS facial features, including characteristic abnormalities of the upper lip and eyes. What they observed in fetuses exposed just 36 hours later, however, was a surprise. These mice exhibited unique and in some cases opposing facial patterns, such as shortened upper lip, a present philtrum, and the brain, instead of appearing too narrow in the front, appeared wide.
“Overall, the results of our studies show that alcohol can cause more than one pattern of birth defects, and that the type and extent of brain abnormalities—which are the most devastating manifestation of prenatal alcohol exposure—in some cases may be predicted by specific facial features,” Sulik said. “And, importantly, alcohol can cause tremendously devastating and permanent damage at a time in development when most women don’t recognize that they’re pregnant.”
Source: Newswise
Sick from Stress? Blame Your Mom… And Epigenetics
If you’re sick from stress, a new research report appearing in the August 2012 issue of The FASEB Journal suggests that what your mother ate — or didn’t eat — may be part of the cause. The report shows that choline intake that is higher than what is generally recommended during pregnancy may improve how a child responds to stress. These improvements are the result of epigenetic changes that ultimately lead to lower cortisol levels. Epigenetic changes affect how a gene functions, even if the gene itself is not changed. Lowering cortisol is important as high levels of cortisol are linked to a wide range of problems ranging from mental health to metabolic and cardiovascular disorders.