�Pregnant women who brave out the psychological stress of being in a war zone are more likely to give birth to a tike who develops schizophrenia. Research published in the open access journal BMC Psychiatry supports a growing dead body of lit that attributes maternal exposure to severe stress during the early months of pregnancy to an increased susceptibility to schizophrenia in the offspring.
According to lead author Dolores Malaspina M.D., M.Sc.P.H., Anita Steckler and Joseph Steckler Professor of Psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine. "The stresses in question ar those that would be experienced in a lifelike disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane, a terrorist attack, or a sudden bereavement".
Data from 88,829 people, born in Jerusalem from 1964 to 1976, were collected from the Jerusalem Perinatal Study that joined birth records to Israel's Psychiatric Registry. The NYU authors discovered that the offspring of women wHO were in their second base month of pregnancy during the elevation of the Arab-Israeli war in June of 1967 (the "Six Day War") displayed a significantly higher incidence of schizophrenia o'er the following 21-33 days. The study also showed that the pattern was gender-specific, poignant females more than males.
Following the 1967 war, females who had been in their second gear month of fetal living during the conflict were 4.3 times more than likely to develop dementia praecox than females born at other multiplication. Males in their mo month of fetal life were 1.2 times more likely to develop schizophrenia. "It's a very striking confirmation of something that has been suspected for quite a some clock time", said Malaspina.
"The placenta is very sensitive to stress hormones in the mother," explains Malaspina, "these hormones were in all probability amplified during the time of the war."
The authors point out that the study, which assessed ongoing medical records, only supports, rather than proves, the hypothesis that the superlative vulnerability to schizophrenia is in the second calendar month of pregnancy. Limitations to the study include a small sample population as well as the absence of information on the exact duration of gestation, which makes it possible that developmental stages were underestimated.
Malaspina likewise points out that pregnant women in general should not be alarmed around handling daily stressors during pregnancy. "A developing fetus requires some exposure to maternal tension hormones as it normalizes their focus functioning," she says. "But women experiencing anxiety or excessive tension would do well to address it before a planned pregnancy and to have good social supporting systems."
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Located in the heart of New York City, NYU Langone Medical Center is unrivaled of the nation's premier centers of excellence in health concern, biomedical research, and medical education. For over 167 years, NYU physicians and researchers have made unnumberable contributions to the practice and scientific discipline of health care. Today the Medical Center consists of NYU School of Medicine, including the Smilow Research Center, the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, and the Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences; the three hospitals of NYU Hospitals Center, Tisch Hospital, a 726-bed acute-care general infirmary, Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, the first and largest facility of its kind, and NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases, a leader in musculoskeletal concern; and such major programs as the NYU Cancer Institute, the NYU Child Study Center, and the Hassenfeld Children's Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders.
1. Acute maternal stress in pregnancy and schizophrenia in offspring: a cohort prospective study.
D Malaspina, C Corcoran, K R Kleinhaus, M C Perrin, S Fennig, D Nahon, Y Friedlander and S Harlap
BMC Psychiatry
2. The co-authors of this study are: Cheryl Corcoran, Karine R Kleinhaus, Mary C Perrin, Shmuel Fennig, Daniella Nahon and Yechiel Friedlander. The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health: and from the National Alliance for Research of Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD).
3. BMC Psychiatry is an open access journal publishing original peer-reviewed enquiry articles in all aspects of the prevention, diagnosing and management of psychiatric disorders, as well as related molecular genetics, pathophysiology, and epidemiology. BMC Psychiatry (ISSN 1471-244X) is indexed/tracked/covered by PubMed, MEDLINE, CAS, Scopus, EMBASE, Thomson Scientific (ISI) and Google Scholar.
4. BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is an independent online publishing menage committed to providing immediate access without charge to the peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes. This commitment is based on the view that open accession to research is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of skill.
Source: Nadine Woloshin
NYU Langone Medical Center / New York University School of Medicine
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