Pressure on mothers to be

Developmental biology: Support mothers to secure future public health

Quite an interesting commentary here on the vital role for public health that science increasing sees in having healthy mothers right from pregnancy.

For example:

The Hertfordshire data and similar records from other UK towns revealed, for instance, that a person weighing 2.7 kilograms (6 pounds) at birth has a 25% higher risk of contracting heart disease in later life, and a 30% higher risk of having a stroke, compared with someone weighing 4.1 kilograms (9 pounds) at birth³.

These findings were soon strengthened by data from a cohort of 20,000 people born in Helsinki between 1924 and 1944. This study showed, for example, that if all the babies at birth had had weights within the highest third of the total range, the incidence of diabetes in later life would have been halved⁴. In the years since, numerous other studies, involving people from places as diverse as Europe, India, Guatemala, the Philippines and South Africa, have revealed similar correlations with effects that extend to the health of grandchildren.

In the past 15 years, researchers have begun to understand the biology underlying the links between development and chronic disease. The evidence suggests that women should start eating healthily well before they get pregnant. Women who are obese, for example, accumulate more metabolites (such as insulin, lactate and triglycerides) in their ovarian follicles⁵ than do women who are not obese. This accumulation can reduce their fertility and increase the likelihood that their offspring will develop certain diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer, later in life.

 And how about this for some justification for my feeling that IVF has involved too much mucking around with nature:

 At the moment of conception, the growing embryo seems to be exquisitely sensitive to its nutritional environment. Studies of babies born through in vitro fertilization, for instance, have shown that birth weights can be affected simply by changing the constituents of the medium in which the embryos are cultured.

It would certainly appear that it will be decades yet before we truly know the long term health consequences of the IVF techniques.