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Children whose mothers are stressed during pregnancy "grow up to be more mentally resilient"
- Researchers badyzed 120 mothers and 120 children in a very violent Brazilian community
- DNA tests revealed that children were able to calm stress responses faster
- The findings go against years of research suggesting that stress has led to behavioral problems
By Connor Boyd for Mailonline
Published on: 10:25 am EDT, May 1, 2019 | Update: 10:25 am EDT, May 1, 2019
New research suggests that children whose mothers suffer from stress by carrying them in the womb can become more mentally resilient.
She found that psychiatric problems were less common among children born in very violent communities where the mother had suffered mental and physical stress during pregnancy.
The researchers suggest that children exposed to stress in the uterus develop a natural protective mechanism that makes them more resilient as they get older.
Children seemed to be more difficult in very stressful environments than those whose mothers did not have the same problems during pregnancy.
But one critic suggested that violence to the mother could harm the development of the baby's brain, which can affect its functioning after birth.
Children whose mothers suffer from mental and physical stress while carrying them in the womb can become more mentally resilient (image of the file)
Scientists from Linkoping University in Sweden badyzed 120 mothers and 120 of their children in a difficult area of Brazil where gang violence and domestic violence were commonplace.
While mothers often showed signs of depression, PTSD, and anxiety after abuse, their children grew up with the ability to "stop stress reactions."
Dr. Daniel Natt, one of the main authors of the study, said: "The children interviewed showed psychiatric consequences of prenatal stress less than those reported repeatedly by less violent populations.
"Of course, our results will still have to be validated because they are based only on a Brazilian cohort.
"But in this cohort, we were able to replicate other studies showing that children with maternal IPV [domestic abuse while pregnant] after being born have more psychiatric problems.
HOW CAN STRESS AFFECT UNBORN CHILDREN?
Angry children
In 2011, the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London discovered that stressed future mothers were more likely to have unruly and angry children.
She found a strong link between mental pressure on the mother during the first months of a child's life and the behavior of the young person at school age.
The research, which has followed thousands of babies from the womb to the school, has revealed that hormones increase the chances that a child presents with a hyperactive deficit disorder. Attention (ADHD) and other behavioral problems.
Prenatal stress and autism
In 2013, the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania discovered that pregnant women transmit the harmful effects of stress to their unborn child through the placenta.
The researchers said the damage was caused by a protein that affects the developing brain of boys and girls differently.
They believe that this could cause disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.
Little babies
In 2017, a study from the University of New Mexico found that stress led to smaller babies.
The results suggest that stress in late pregnancy can lead to underdevelopment of the fetus.
Risk of stillbirth
Scientists from the University Hospital of Aarhus in Denmark have established the link between stress and stillbirth after monitoring the health status of more than 19,000 women in the last three months of the pregnancy.
They found that future stressed mothers were almost twice the risk of stillbirths.
"It's only when maternal IPV occurred during and after pregnancy that these psychiatric problems were less severe. Thus, the prenatal component seems to have played a role here.
The results go against years of study suggesting that children born to stressed mothers develop behavioral problems and even autism.
Animal studies in the past have shown that prenatal stress causes behavioral changes in children, making them better equipped to survive in threatening environments.
Dr. Natt added, "In animals, under certain circumstances, the exposure of pregnant women to predators leads to behavioral and molecular changes in the offspring, which are beneficial in predator-rich environments, but not otherwise. "
In addition to conducting interviews, the researchers collected saliva samples from the 240 participants.
They tested DNA methylation in saliva, a type of genetic change that changes the way genes are expressed without changing the genetic code.
According to previous studies, DNA methylation would be involved in the formation of psychiatric resilience after stress at the beginning of life.
The results showed that children whose mothers had suffered prenatal stress could stop stress reactions more quickly.
Dr. Natt said, "We have observed that several well-known stress genes, such as the glucocorticoid receptor and its repressive protein FKBP51, that regulate one of our most important stress hormones, cortisol, matter among the most methylated.
"Surprisingly, the way these genes were methylated suggested to us that children who were stressed before birth had an increased ability to stop stress responses."
Dr. Natt called for the results to be examined by others, as there could be "multiple interpretations of the results".
He added, "One of the interpretations of the findings is that stressed mothers prepare in one way or another their offspring for a violent environment. Personally, I am skeptical of this interpretation.
"I would prefer to believe that violence during pregnancy leads, as many studies have shown, to suboptimal brain development.
"For example, prenatal stress has been badociated with antisocial behavior and a higher risk of autism spectrum disorders."
The results were published in Frontiers in Genetics, a rigorously peer-reviewed study.
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