Researchers at Harvard Medical School in Boston reported Sunday that pregnant women who are under stress due to financial problems, relationships or other issues may be putting their babies at greater risk for allergies, asthma and other conditions.
The research, presented in Toronto during a meeting of the American Thoracic Society, suggests that stress during pregnancy could have long-lasting health effects on the baby.
“This research adds to a growing body of evidence that links maternal stress such as that precipitated by financial problems or relationship issues to changes in children’s developing immune systems, even during pregnancy,” wrote Dr. Rosalind Wright of Harvard Medical School in a statement.
Wright and her team discovered that mothers who were the most distraught during pregnancy were also the ones most likely to deliver infants with higher levels of an immune system compound called immunoglobulin E, or IgE. The higher IgE levels were observed regardless of the mother’s exposure to allergens during pregnancy.
The Harvard team designed their study to examine whether previous research conducted in animals also applied to humans. The animal research had found a correlation between the stress of the mother and the effects of allergen exposure on the offspring’s immune system.
In conducting their study, Dr. Wright and her colleagues measured levels of IgE from the umbilical cord blood of 387 newborns in Boston. They found that babies whose mothers had the most stress, but who also had low exposure to dust mites, still had highest levels of IgE in their cord blood. The results suggest that stress amplified the immune response, results that held true regardless of the mother’s class, race, education or smoking history.
“This further supports the notion that stress can be thought of as a social pollutant that, when ‘breathed’ into the body, may influence the body’s immune response,” said Wright in a statement.
The study is in line with recent research conducted by Dr. Andrea Danese of the University of London, who followed 1,000 people in New Zealand from birth to the age of 32. Dr. Danese’s study found that children who had experienced mistreatment, such as harsh discipline, parental rejection or sexual abuse, had twice the levels of inflammation in their blood even two decades after the traumatic event.
These inflammatory markers, such as C-reactive protein, fibrinogen and immune cells, are known to increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease.
“Stress in childhood may modify developmental trajectories and have a long-term effect on disease risk,” Danese told Reuters. His findings were presented at a conference in Chicago last week on the health consequences of early life influences.
Danese said maltreatment in childhood might impair the ability of glucocorticoids, inflammation-inhibiting hormones, to appropriately respond to stress later in life. This could in turn lead to conditions such as depression and other psychiatric ailments. He advised that children who have survived such maltreatment should get a jump on preventive care for common adult diseases.
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