Maternal stress levels during early pregnancy can have a lasting effect on the next generation.
A team of scientists from the University of Göttingen and the German Primate Center – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research carried out research that focused on maternal stress and its consequences in the offspring’s stress hormonal system.
The results of this long-term study, carried out with wild monkeys in Thailand, showed that activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axiswhich plays a central role in combating stress, can be significantly influenced by exposure to maternal glucocorticoids during development.
According to , the most critical phase is the initial phase of organ differentiationwhich happens in the first half of pregnancy.
“Our findings reveal that the more adversities the mother goes through at the beginning of pregnancy – food shortages or social conflicts, for example – the greater the activity of the puppies’ HPA axis,” explained researcher Simone Anzá.
Unlike other studies that were carried out in the laboratory, the German researchers decided to observe the monkeys in their natural habitat. Over a nine-year period, they collected several fecal samples from pregnant females and measured the concentration of glucocorticoid metabolites to determine the animals’ exposure to environmental factors such as food shortages, temperature fluctuations and social interactions.
The values were then compared with the stress hormone levels of offspring at different ages, and the effects of prenatal stress were evident from childhood to adulthood.
According to the team, this early stress is associated with a altered growth, negative changes in the gut microbiome and poorer immune function.
Although the study was carried out on animals, Oliver Schülke, a scientist at the University of Göttingen, warns that stress in early pregnancy can also have a long-term effect on human health and increase the risk of immune disorders and problems.
“Our findings can help identify the timing and mechanisms that preventive measures should address to reduce health risks,” concluded the researcher.
The was recently published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
