Using Natural Disasters to Study the Effects of Prenatal Maternal Stress on Child Health and Development

• Published in: Birth defects research. Part C. Embryo today Vol. 96; no. 4; pp. 273 - 288
• Main Authors: King, Suzanne, Dancause, Kelsey, Turcotte-Tremblay, Anne-Marie, Veru, Franz, Laplante, David P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.12.2012; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Body Mass Index; Child; Child development; Child Development - physiology; Child Welfare; Cognition - physiology; disaster research; Disasters; Female; Humans; Male; newborn and child outcomes; Obesity - metabolism; Pregnancy; Pregnancy Outcome; Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects; prenatal maternal stress; Quebec; Storms; Stress, Physiological; Studies; Womens health; Quebec; disaster research; newborn and child outcomes; prenatal maternal stress
• ISSN: 1542-975X; 1542-9768; 1542-9768
• DOI: 10.1002/bdrc.21026

Research on the developmental origins of health and disease highlights the plasticity of the human fetus to a host of potential teratogens. Experimental research on laboratory animals has demonstrated a variety of physical and behavioral effects among offspring exposed to prenatal maternal stress (PNMS). However, these studies cannot elucidate the relative effects of the objective stress exposure and the subjective distress in a way that would parallel the stress experience in humans. PNMS research with humans is also limited because there are ethical challenges to designing studies that involve the random assignment of pregnant women to varying levels of independent stressors. Natural disasters present opportunities for natural experiments of the effects of pregnant women's exposure to stress on child development. In this review, we present an overview of the human and animal research on PNMS, and highlight the results of Project Ice Storm which has been following the cognitive, behavioral, motor and physical development of children exposed in utero to the January 1998 Quebec Ice Storm. We have found that both objective degree of exposure to the storm and the mothers' subjective distress have strong and persistent effects on child development, and that these effects are often moderated by the timing of the ice storm in pregnancy and by the child's sex. Birth Defects Research (Part C) 96:273–288, 2012. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.