Commentary on the Role of Prenatal Stress in Developmental Programming of Obesity and Metabolic Dysfunction

摘要

Research on developmental origins of adult disease has devoted considerable attention to exploring the critical role of nutrition and metabolism during preand postnatal life in early growth and development, and their long-term impact on health, performance and well-being [ 1,2]. Dr. Entringer and Dr. Wadhwa add an innovative aspect to exploring the concept of early programming that might well turn out to be very important. They suggest that maternal psy-chosocial stress and stress biology have a considerable impact on fetal development, characteristics at birth, and subsequent developmental and health outcomes in the child. In particular, they propose that maternal psychosocial stress induces increased risks for adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes, preterm birth, low birthweight and small-for-gestational age infants [3].