A Mother's Stress Can Cause Obesity During Her Unborn Children's Adulthood

Are you stressed? Then your children may have a higher risk of obesity as adults. Scientists have found that unborn children who are exposed to severe stress levels have a higher risk of becoming overweight as they grow.

In previous studies, researchers showed that severe stress experienced by pregnant women can lead to weight problems for children between the ages of 10 and 13. Yet until now, scientists have been unsure how stress might impact these children once they reached adulthood.

The researchers focused on women who experienced the death of a close relative just before or during pregnancy. Then, they followed the women's male children until early adulthood. The scientists examined data from 119,908 young men who had their body mass index (BMI) measured.

"Overall our results indicate that stress can create a programming of the unborn child that makes it susceptible to putting on weight after birth," said Lena Hohwu, one of the researchers, in a news release. "So even though we still have a lot of research to do in this area, we have added a little piece to our understanding of why we are experiencing an obesity epidemic, in which one in five children in Denmark are overweight-and where most of them will remain overweight as adults."

The findings reveal how stress can greatly impact children far into their futures. In fact, scientists found that the more stressed that the mother was during pregnancy, the more likely that the child was to be more obese.

"We have specifically investigated the stress factor that occurs when the child's mother loses a close relative just before or during pregnancy, that is, before the child is born," said Hohwu in a news release. "We have designated this as 'an indicator of severe stress' that can double the risk of developing obesity in adulthood. But as this type of stress is fortunately rare, we are currently investigating whether there is a more general effect of stress."

The findings reveal a bit more about the impacts of stress on unborn children. This, in turn, could help scientists develop treatments or target obesity in the future.

The findings are published in the journal PLOS One.