Prenatal Stress due to a Natural Disaster Predicts Adiposity in Childhood: The Iowa Flood Study

Abstract

Prenatal stress can affect lifelong physical growth, including increased obesity risk. However, human studies remain limited. Natural disasters provide models of independent stressors unrelated to confounding maternal characteristics. We assessed degree of objective hardship and subjective distress in women pregnant during severe flooding. At ages 2.5 and 4 years we assessed body mass index (BMI), subscapular plus triceps skinfolds (SS + TR, an index of total adiposity), and SS : TR ratio (an index of central adiposity) in their children (n = 106). Hierarchical regressions controlled first for several potential confounds. Controlling for these, flood exposure during early gestation predicted greater BMI increase from age 2.5 to 4, as well as total adiposity at 2.5. Greater maternal hardship and distress due to the floods, as well as other nonflood life events during pregnancy, independently predicted greater increase in total adiposity between 2.5 and 4 years. These results support the hypothesis that prenatal stress increases adiposity beginning in childhood and suggest that early gestation is a sensitive period. Results further highlight the additive effects of maternal objective and subjective stress, life events, and depression, emphasizing the importance of continued studies on multiple, detailed measures of maternal mental health and experience in pregnancy and child growth.

Sex Differences in Vulnerability to Prenatal Stress: a Review of the Recent Literature

“…(Note, studies evaluating fetal weight and birth weight were included in the Fetal/Neonatal Health section.) In the Iowa Flood Study ( N  = 106), there was no evidence of sex-dependent associations between PNMS related to a flooding disaster and early childhood BMI and adiposity [32]. Similarly, data from the Quebec Ice Storm study ( N  = 111) showed no evidence of sex-dependent associations between disaster-related PNMS and child adiposity or BMI (ages 5–15) [31].…”

Systematic review and meta-analysis on the relationship between prenatal stress and metabolic syndrome intermediate phenotypes

“…1. Full text review yielded 24 publications for inclusion into the systematic review and meta-analyses [35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58]. The list of excluded studies with reasons for exclusion is available in SI 5.…”

“…We performed two separate meta-analyses for BMI and body fat datasets. Table 1 altogether with SI 6 illustrate the characteristics of the 19 included studies [35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,53,55,56,58]. Thirteen studies included a relatively similar amount of males and females.…”

Natural disaster-related prenatal maternal stress is associated with alterations in placental glucocorticoid system: The QF2011 Queensland Flood Study

“…There is growing evidence that prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) due to a natural disaster is linked to adverse fetal development and alterations in child outcomes (Dancause et al, 2015;King et al, 2005;Laplante et al, 2004;Simcock et al, 2017;Simcock et al, 2016). Several studies have linked maternal depression, anxiety and stress in pregnancy with adverse fetal outcomes (Brunton and Russell, 2011;Buss et al, 2010;Davis et al, 2011;O'Connor et al, 2005;Ponder et al, 2011).…”