background: alpha methyldopa (amd) is a well-known treatment for the pregnancy induced hypertension and commonly used in several countries. indeed the possible effect of amd on the behavioral activities of offspring, whom are exposed during fetus period, has not been studied. the present study evaluated the possible effect of maternal administration of amd on the rat offspring memory in the gro...

OBJECTIVES Offspring of hypertensive pregnancies have increased cardiovascular risk factors during childhood. We hypothesised that offspring of hypertensive pregnancies would demonstrate increased clinical levels of hypertension by young adult life, which would be proportional to the severity of the pregnancy complication. DESIGN Prospective birth cohort study SETTING Tertiary obstetric hos...

Air pollution is the 9th cause of overall disease burden globally. The solid component in polluted air, particulate matters (PMs) with a diameter 2.5 μm or smaller (PM2.5) possess significant health risk to several organ systems. PM2.5 has also been shown cross blood–placental barrier and circulate foetal blood. Therefore, it considered an intrauterine environmental toxin. Exposure during perin...

OBJECTIVES To determine whether maternal obesity during pregnancy is associated with increased mortality from cardiovascular events in adult offspring. DESIGN Record linkage cohort analysis. SETTING Birth records from the Aberdeen Maternity and Neonatal databank linked to the General Register of Deaths, Scotland, and the Scottish Morbidity Record systems. POPULATION 37 709 people with bir...

Background: Preterm labor is a major problem in obstetric practice. Rates of preterm birth vary between different populations and ethnic groups. In maternal fetal medicine, gender differences in outcome are often observed. Epidemiologic studies have suggested that the incidence of preterm birth is also higher in pregnancies carrying a male fetus. The purpose of this article is to review the evi...

The extent to which key biological processes, such as sex determination, respond to environmental fluctuations is fundamental for assessing species' susceptibility to ongoing climate change. Few studies, however, address how climate affects offspring sex in the wild. We monitored two climatically distinct populations of the viviparous skink Niveoscincus ocellatus for 16 years, recording environ...

1. Prey responses to high predation risk can be morphological or behavioural and ultimately come at the cost of survival, growth, body condition, or reproduction. These sub-lethal predator effects have been shown to be mediated by physiological stress. We tested the hypothesis that elevated glucocorticoid concentrations directly cause a decline in reproduction in individual free-ranging female ...

Exposure of pregnant mice to a low-protein diet (LP) impairs endocrine pancreas development in their offspring. There is evidence that this phenomenon may persist in subsequent generations. Here, we evaluated the effect of LP on glucose metabolism and pancreatic morphometry in the F3 offspring of mice at birth and weaning. LP pups in the first generation were smaller at birth, but catch-up grow...

The aim of the present study was to compare a model assuming unknown paternity and a model using genetic grouping to indicate the most adequate statistical procedure for the estimation of breeding values for animals with uncertain paternity. After data consistency, 62,212 Nellore animals, offspring of 581 bulls and 27,743 cows, were used in the analyses. The pedigree file contained 75,088 anima...

Animal studies and a handful of prospective human studies have demonstrated that young offspring exposed to maternal prenatal stress show abnormalities in immune parameters and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function. No study has examined the effect of maternal prenatal depression on offspring inflammation and HPA axis activity in adulthood, nor the putative role of child maltreatme...