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Pregnant Women May Pass Stress Marker To Babies
03 May 2005 18:05:15 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON, May 3 (Reuters) - Pregnant women who were traumatised by
witnessing the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center may have
passed on a biological sign of stress to their unborn babies,
scientists said on Tuesday.
Researchers found the women and their babies had reduced levels of
the stress hormone cortisol, which is a sign someone has been
affected by post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Low levels of cortisone have been observed in the children of
Holocaust survivors, but researchers had put them down to living
with a depressed parent or hearing stories about what had happened
to them.
The latest study suggests however that a mother can pass on low
cortisol levels to her unborn child, researchers at the Mount Sinai
School of Medicine in New York and the University of Edinburgh in
Scotland said.
"This shows that exposure to severe stress in pregnancy is
associated not only with PTSD in the mothers but also with the
biologic marker of it -- low hormone levels in the saliva -- in the
offspring long before they could have been listening to tales,"
Professor Jonathan Seckl, of the University of Edinburgh, said in an
interview.
Seckl said it was too early to tell if the children would suffer any
ill effects. The researchers plan to follow up the children during
their development. In a study of 38 pregnant women Seckl and Dr
Rachel Yehuda, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, found lower than
normal levels of cortisol in saliva samples from the women who
suffered PTSD linked to the 9/11 attacks, and in their infants.
The mothers and their babies had lower levels of the hormone than
women who did not develop PTSD following the tragedy. Even a year
after the children's birth, babies of stressed mothers had lower
levels than other children.
"Something happens in PTSD that makes the brain more sensitive to
cortisol," said Seckl.
"It marks some change that has happened in the brain."
The low levels were most apparent in babies born to mothers who were
in the final three months of their pregnancy on 9/11, according to
the study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and
Metabolism.
"The findings suggest that mechanisms for transgenerational
transmission of biologic effects of trauma may have to do with very
early parent-child attachments," Yehuda said in a statement.
She added the effects of cortisol programming could even begin
before birth.
The findings suggest a mother suffering from PTSD may provide a less
effective, or different, form of care for her child or there may
have been some sort of biological signal sent through the placenta
to the fetus while it was developing.
original link: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L03613937.htm