Prenatal Stress and its Effect on Children

Through laboratory experiments with rats, Prof. Marta Weinstock-Rosin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem School of Pharmacy is studying how maternal stress during pregnancy can lead to developmental and emotional problems in their offspring. From a press release, which notes that some of the “unfortunate consequences” that children can develop are “slower development, learning and attention difficulties, anxiety and depressive symptoms and possibly even autism.”

Weinstock-Rosin has been able to show through her laboratory experiments that when rat mothers were subject to stressful situations (irritating sounds at alternating times, for example), their offspring were later shown to have impaired learning and memory abilities, less capacity to cope with adverse situations (such as food deprivation), and symptoms of anxiety and depressive-like behavior, as compared to those rats in control groups that were born to unstressed mothers. All of these symptoms parallel the impairments that have been observed in children born to mothers who were stressed in pregnancy, she points out.

Further experiments by Weinstock-Rosin and her students have shown the crucial effect of excessive levels of the hormone cortisol that is released by the adrenal gland during stress and reaches the fetal brain during critical stages of brain development. Under normal conditions, this hormone has a beneficial function in supplying instant energy, but it has to be in small amounts and for a short period of time. Under conditions of excessive stress, however, the large amount of this hormone reaching the fetal brain can cause structural and functional changes. In humans, above-normal levels of cortisol can also stimulate the release of another hormone from the placenta that will cause premature birth, another factor that can affect normal development.

Prof. Weinstock-Rosin will present her research at a conference, “Long Term Consequences of Early Life Stress,” to be held at Mishkenot Sha’ananim in Jerusalem on October 29 and 30.

Parents of autistic children may, I suspect, may approach these findings with some hesitation, due to older (and widely discredited) theories of autism causation, such as the “refrigerator mother” theory and the more recent, and simply inaccurate and offensive, comments by Denis Leary about “laziness” in parents with autistic. (Leary’s been blaming his Irish-Catholic parents for his controversial remarks—but perhaps he ought to cease blaming others and listen to his own words.)

And I should note, the press release about Prof. Weinstock-Rosin’s study ends with the phrase

Husbands take note!