Prenatal environment and its relation to risks of diseases

Could your grandmother’s lifestyle and living conditions expose you to higher risk of cancer and metabolic diseases? Studies have been done where data collected from the Dutch Hunger Winter from 1944 to 1945 during World War 2 has shown that man who were fetuses during this period have high risks of getting metabolic diseases further on in life. It has been suggested that the prenatal environment experienced by the fetus gives a prediction of post-natal conditions, thus programming of the fetus phenotype for survival. As for cancers such as breast cancer, leukaemia and hepatoblastoma, various studies done have shown that a child’s birth weight is correlated to the future risk of cancer occurring within the child. From these studies, we can conclude that intra-uterine constraints has a significant role in exposing a child’s risk of developing diseases, however, post-natal environmental conditions would have a final say on the child’s fate.

By Wilson