Fetal programming

Lau C Rogers JM (2005) Embryonic and fetal programming of physiological disorders in adulthood. Birth Defects Res C Embryo Today, 72 300-312. 

Langley-Evans S Fetal programming of immune function and respiratory disease. Clin Exp Allergy 1997 27 1377-1379. 

Godfrey KM, Barker DJ. Fetal programming and adult health. Public Health Nutr 2001 4 611-624. 

In modern pediatrics and developmental psychobiology, this adaptation is called fetal programming or prenatal programming. It s a new concept. The general idea is that during development important physiological parameters can be reset by environmental events—and the resetting can endure into... 

The idea is fetal programming. Fetal programming and its variants—such as the Barker hypothesis, the fetal or developmental origins hypothesis, the developmental origins of disease hypotheses, and some others—all refer to the same phenomenon An interaction of the environment with the fetus whose effects may not show up until years later and may or may not be transgenerational. Apart from this common thread, however, there are some significant differences in the emphasis of each hypothesis. 

The term fetal programming is thus also used to signify a much broader range of programmed causes and their later effects—that is, to encompass not only predispositions of individuals to later physical disease, but also predispositions to later behavior patterns that range from ordinary to pathological. 

In this book I use the term fetal programming —without reference to mechanism—to describe environmental impact of any kind on the fetus that produces alterations in health and disease apparent at any time in childhood or adulthood. This idea is essentially an extension into the prenatal period of more general conclusions about the role of early experience in later life. Included in this conception are postnatal temperament, behavior patterns, intelligence, psychopathology, and so on—the behavioral focus of this book. The point is that sometimes postnatal consequences of prenatal environmental impacts involve more than just alterations in the physiology of organ systems—such impacts can also have consequences for later behavior and cognitive performance. 

During fetal development, there are critical periods of vulnerability to environmental impacts, the critical periods occurring at various times in different tissues. Cells rapidly dividing to form tissues and organs are at greatest risk, and it s reasonable that fetal programming is more likely to occur in such tissues. 

In addition, anthropologists have analyzed the long-term effects of early developmental conditions in a population in which both nutritional levels and the burden of infectious diseases show a seasonal variation. For example, a study of a village on Minorca Island, Spain,18 matched birth and death data for 4646 individuals born between 1624 and 1870. The results show that the season of birth had a long-term effect on survival in the birth cohort 1800—1870 summer births had a lower risk of death after age 15. One explanation for the results is a lower susceptibility to degenerative diseases in adult years due to superior in utero nutrition for summer births—a fetal programming hypothesis. 

This raises an important question Is it possible that evolved fetal programming to achieve fetal survival can also occur at the cost of later dysfunctions of brain and behavior We don t yet know the answer to this question. What we do know is that the neurological and behavioral consequences of various environmental effects on the fetus range from subtle to catastrophic. The evidence concerning fetal programming that results in physical... 

In the United Kingdom, for example, women whose birth weight was less than 6.6 pounds have an increased risk of depression at age 26 years. In men, those born weighing less than 5.5 pounds are more likely to be psychologically distressed at age 16 years and to report a history of depression at age 26 years. It s apparent that impaired neurodevelopment during fetal life may increase susceptibility to depression.56 This is consistent with the idea that fetal programming may affect hormones and neurotransmitter secretions that influence later mental and physical health.57... 

Jansson, T. Powell, T. L. (2007). Role of the placenta in fetal programming underlying mechanisms and potential interventional approaches. Clin. Sci. (Lond). 113 1—13. 

Fetal programming how the quality of fetal life alters... 

Pesonen, A. K., Raikkonen, K., Kajantie, E., Heinonen, K., Strandberg, T. E., Jarvenpaa, A. L. (2006). Fetal programming of temperamental negative affectivity among children born healthy at term. Dev. Psychobiol. 48 633—643. 

Phillips, D. I. Jones, A. (2006). Fetal programming of autonomic and 1FPA function do people who were small babies have enhanced stress responses J. Physiol. 572(Pt i) 45—50. 

Longtine, M.S., and Nelson, D.M., 2011. Placental dysfunction and fetal programming the importance of placental size, shape, histopathology, and molecular composition. Seminars in Reproductive Medicine. 29 187-196. 

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