Fetal Stress May Cause Chronic Disease

Medical research now shows that too much stress can make you sick. Situations that invoke unnecessary stressors or issues in life can cause heartache, anxiety and even aggravate pre-existing medical conditions.

A new report  conducted by Harvard researchers shows high stress levels even in the womb can trigger epigenetic disruptions that may  occur when associated with chronic disease later in life that are already common at birth.

"This study may help us understand whether epigenetic mechanisms contribute to chronic disease susceptibility already prior to birth," said Karin Michels, Sc.D., Ph.D., study author from Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass, via a press release. "We are currently exploring which stressors during prenatal life may contribute to these epigenetic disruptions."

Michels and colleagues examined the expression pattern of imprinted genes that are essential for growth and development. Researchers then examined the parental expression pattern in the cord blood and placenta of over 100 infants and followed up with an analysis of methylation and expression studies. Results showed an emerging theme that certain susceptibilities to various disease may occur in utero. Other results from the study also showed the imprinting of a gene called IGF2 that expressed both alleles in the cord blood of 22 percent of study subjects. Loss of imprinting of IGF2 has been associated with several cancer in previous studies.

"For a long time, doctors have considered fetal stress as a symptom of serious familial disease," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor -in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "Now, we see that fetal stress is in and of itself a long-term risk factor for chronic disease: it changes the way we inherit genes from our parents."

More information regarding the study can be found in The FASEB Journal.