The impact of maternal flood-related stress and social support on offspring weight in early childhood

Kroska, Emily B.; O’Hara, Michael W.; Elgbeili, Guillaume; Hart, Kimberly J.; Laplante, David P.; Dancause, Kelsey Needham; King, Suzanne

doi:10.1007/s00737-017-0786-x

Cited by 22 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…All studies were conducted in high‐income countries. Seven studies were conducted in Europe of which five of these were conducted in Denmark, four in Canada, three in the United States, and one in Australia. Except one study, which was a retrospective cohort study, all other studies were prospective cohort studies.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the cohort studies based on Project Ice Storm, pregnant women were exposed to the Quebec ice storm of January 1998. In the three Project Ice Storm studies and Iowa Flood study, the exposures were recorded mainly as subjective and objective prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) while one had cognitive appraisal of the natural disaster as exposure. Objective PNMS referred to the experience of threat, loss, scope, and changes due to the exposure to a particular event and subjective PNMS were experience of intrusive thoughts, hyperarousal, and avoidance.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In two other studies, biomarkers alone such as salivary cortisol and maternal CRH were used as exposures. Other exposures were objective hardship and subjective distress (similar to objective and subjective PNMS) in natural disasters, loss of family member or close relatives during pregnancy, divorce or parental separation, life events, and residential traffic noise.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Associations between maternal stress during pregnancy and offspring obesity risk later in life—A systematic literature review

et al. 2019

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Exposure to prenatal stress is linked to health consequences in the offspring. The objective of this systematic review was to synthesize and critically appraise primary human studies that have examined the association between prenatal exposure to psychosocial stress, or adverse life events, stress hormones, and later risk of developing obesity. We searched Medline, Embase, ScienceDirect, WorldCat, and OpenGrey up to January 2019 to identify relevant literature. We critically appraised the identified studies, assessed their quality, and summarized their findings. From a total of 5930 search results and references of studies that authors considered pertinent, we identified 15 relevant studies among which three were of high quality and the rest were medium-quality studies. We found direct association between exposure to stress in fetal life and different measures of obesity in the offspring in eight studies.The direct association was usually observed in studies that involved measurement of stress among mothers exposed to natural disasters. Due to lack of adequate and comparable data from the included studies, we did not conduct a meta-analysis. We concluded that there may be direct association between prenatal stress and later obesity, but further research with more comparable sources of stressors is recommended.BMI, life events, obesity, prenatal stress 1 | BACKGROUND The rising burden of overweight and obesity in all age groups across most parts of the world is a major global health challenge 1 . The health risks of obesity are well accepted in scientific communities 2-4 .Children with obesity are likely to also be overweight or obese in adulthood and the consequent health risks increase with age 5-8 . The morbidities related to obesity also have large economic consequences 9 . Thus, there is a public health urgency to identify preventable causes to intervene against obesity.Excessive intake of energy dense foods and low levels of physical activity are two major factors that contribute to obesity 10,11 . In addition, several studies have established clear associations between maternal exposure to an adverse external environment such as famine or undernutrition during pregnancy, and various short-and long-term Abbreviations: BMI, body mass index; CRH, corticotropin-releasing hormone; DXA, dualenergy X-ray absorptiometry; DNBC, Danish National Birth Cohort; FMI, fat mass index; HPA axis, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis; MOOSE, meta-analyses and systematic reviews of observational studies; PNMS, prenatal maternal stress; PROSPERO, international prospective register of ongoing systematic reviews; SS, subscapular thickness; TR, triceps thickness; WHtR, waist-to-height ratio.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Associations between maternal stress during pregnancy and offspring obesity risk later in life—A systematic literature review

et al. 2019

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“…However, these effects were decreased if the pregnant woman had higher social support during the flood (Kroska et al. ). Therefore, providing increased social support to pregnant women during and after natural disasters may have positive consequences for generations after the specific traumatic event.…”

Section: Intergenerational Stress Resilience and Recovery: The Bodymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies of the children born to mothers that experienced the stressful conditions of the floods in Iowa in 2008 have shown that these children had higher birth weights, increased body mass index (BMI-a measurement of obesity risk) at thirty months. However, these effects were decreased if the pregnant woman had higher social support during the flood (Kroska et al 2017). Therefore, providing increased social support to pregnant women during and after natural disasters may have positive consequences for generations after the specific traumatic event.…”

Section: Intergenerational Stress Resilience and Recovery: The Bodymentioning

confidence: 99%

Remembrance and Resilience: How the Bodyself Responds to Trauma

Pederson¹,

Nuetzman²,

Gubbels³

et al. 2018

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How do the experiences of people who undergo extreme suffering and trauma in one generation get passed on to the next generation? And how do these experiences affect religious–spiritual beliefs and practices? Can we help to create resilience in these later generations through these religious–spiritual beliefs? In order to answer these questions, one must remember and understand not only how trauma is embodied and inherited, but also the role that religious beliefs and practices play in facing and overcoming the trauma. People who have experienced trauma can pass on the effects to subsequent generations biologically through epigenetic changes to their DNA, but also through their religious and spiritual beliefs and practices. The ways people remember and recover from trauma involve complex biological, psychosocial, and spiritual processes. We use the sciences of embodied cognition and epigenetics to analyze the heritability of trauma and its spiritual–religious manifestations in the next generations. Having done so, our hope is that we can understand how spiritual and religious practices can be developed to help people who undergo trauma so that they can become resilient and thrive.

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