Maternal starvation has lasting effect on fetus’ DNA

Malnourishment in a pregnant woman has a lasting effect on her child’s DNA. This was the implications of a new study on children born during the famine of World War II.

Scientists studied the DNA of children who were born to women starved during the 1944 Hunger Winter in the Netherlands. They analyzed a gene called insulin-like growth factor 2 or IGF2, an important growth hormone. Methyl groups that attach to IGF2 very early in fetal development determine how much of the growth hormone is made later, and protect the DNA from damage.

The scientists found that those children (now in their 60s)  who were exposed to famine in the first trimester of pregnancy had lesser methyl groups in the IGF2 gene than their siblings of the same sex.

Loss of methylation in IGF2 has previously been linked to colorectal cancer in humans. In this latest study, it’s too early to tell what the epigenetic effects are of a mother’s starvation on the adult life of her child. But the take home from this is that extreme maternal diet (either starvation or eating disorder) does affect the fetal DNA, and those effects leave their mark decades later.