BACKGROUND Stress is an inevitable part of life, and maternal stress during the gestational period has dramatic effects in the early programming of the physiology and behavior of offspring. The developmental period is crucial for the well-being of the offspring. Prenatal stress influences the developmental outcomes of the fetus, in part because the developing brain is particularly vulnerable to...

This longitudinal observational study investigated whether fetuses change their hand preference with gestational age, and also examined the effects of maternal stress on lateralized fetal self-touch. Following ethical approval, fifteen healthy fetuses (8 girls and 7 boys), were scanned four times from 24-36 weeks gestation. Self-touch behaviours which resulted in a touch of the fetal face/head ...

This study examined the relationship between moderate-level prenatal alcohol exposure, prenatal stress, and postnatal response to a challenging event in 6-month-old rhesus monkeys. Forty-one rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) infants were exposed prenatally to moderate level alcohol, maternal stress, or both. Offspring plasma cortisol and adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) were determined from blo...

Maternal stress has been linked to psychological well-being and a greater likelihood of poor adjustment for both mother and child. Furthermore, higher levels of stress were predicted for mothers with a perception of limited partner support and/or low frustration tolerance. Sixty-one mothers of infants that were contacted via mail completed the Survey of Personal Beliefs (SPB; Kassinove, 1986), ...

Studies have suggested a potential association between maternal stress during pregnancy and an increased risk of specific diseases in offspring, prompting calls for a closer examination of stress as an environmental health factor. A new comprehensive study based on a large population-based cohort in Denmark explores this association further by examining maternal stress during pregnancy and the ...

BACKGROUND Many women are working outside of the home, occupying a multitude of jobs with varying degrees of responsibilities and levels of psychological stress. We investigated whether different job types in women are associated with child sex at birth, with the hypothesis that women in job types, which are categorized as "high psychological stress" jobs, would be more likely to give birth to ...

INTRODUCTION Maternal obesity has been shown to be a risk factor for obesity in children and may also affect children's psychosocial outcomes. It is not yet clear whether there are also psycho-emotional mechanisms explaining the effects of maternal weight on young children's weight and psychosocial development. We aimed to evaluate whether maternal body mass index (BMI), mother-child emotional ...

This study examined a comprehensive array of psychosocial factors, including life events, social support, depression, pregnancy-related anxiety, perceived discrimination, and neighborhood safety in relation to preterm birth (<37 weeks) in a prospective cohort study of 1,962 pregnant women in central North Carolina between 1996 and 2000, in which 12% delivered preterm. There was an increased ris...

BACKGROUND Chronic stress is considered to be one of many causes of human preterm birth (PTB), but no direct evidence has yet been provided. Here we show in rats that stress across generations has downstream effects on endocrine, metabolic and behavioural manifestations of PTB possibly via microRNA (miRNA) regulation. METHODS Pregnant dams of the parental generation were exposed to stress fro...

Maternal heat stress induced the aberrant epigenetic patterns resulting in the abnormal development of offspring embryos. It is unclear whether maternal dietary manganese supplementation as an epigenetic modifier could protect the chick embryonic development against maternal heat stress via epigenetic mechanisms. To test this hypothesis using an avian model, a completely randomized design with ...