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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children born to mothers who experience severe stress in the first trimester of pregnancy are at increased risk for developing schizophrenia later in life, new research shows.
Stress during pregnancy has been linked to an increased risk of prematurity and birth defects in the baby. Whether such stress affects the infant's neurological development, specifically the risk of schizophrenia, is unclear, according to the report in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
Dr. Kathryn M. Abel, from the University of Manchester in the UK, and colleagues investigated this topic by analyzing data from 1.38 million births that took place in Denmark from 1973 to 1995.
The focus was on severe mental distress in the 6 months before conception or during pregnancy. Stress indicators included the death of a close relative, or a diagnosis of cancer, heart attack, or stroke in a close relative. Children were followed from 10 years of age for the occurrence of schizophrenia.
The likelihood of developing schizophrenia and related disorders among children born to mothers who experienced a death of a relative during the first trimester was 67 percent higher than among children with non-stressed mothers.
By contrast, severe stress due to other causes or that occurred before pregnancy or during other trimesters did not increase the risk of schizophrenia in the offspring.
The link between first trimester stress and schizophrenia in offspring is "consistent with other evidence from whole populations exposed to severe stressors but requires replication in larger samples to allow examination of, for example, sex differences," the researchers point out. Nonetheless, they conclude, "Our findings suggest that environment may influence neurodevelopment at the feto-placental-maternal interface."
SOURCE: Archives of General Psychiatry, February 2008.
