A new research shows that prenatal maternal stress may increase the chances of asthma and autism in children.
Researchers at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute along with scientists at McGill University studied women who were pregnant during the 1998 January Quebec ice storm. The storm left more than 3 million people in Quebec in darkness for nearly 45 days.
The researchers examined the effects of the stress on the development of the unborn babies. For the study, the researchers assessed the degree od the mother's objective hardship from the storm (such as more days without electricity) and the subjective degree of distress. It showed up in differences among those children displaying asthma like symptoms and autism-like behaviors.
Researchers noted that the children did not have any symptoms of autism before the study.
The study findings showed that more the mother's objective hardship from the ice storms, greater was the mother's suffering about the ice storm after 5 months. Children born to these mothers showed some form of autistic behavior by 6 years of age.
These characteristics were difficulty in socializing, feeling clumsy, speech problems and more. The effect of stress was strongest in mother's who were in their first trimester. Children born to mothers who displayed high levels of hardship from ice storm and low levels of distress had extremely severe symptoms.
"We have found effects of the mothers' objective hardship from the ice storm (such as the number of days without electricity), or their degree of distress from the storm, on every aspect of child development that we have studied," lead study author Suzanne King, PhD, said in a press release. "This is surprising, since the children in our study are mostly from upper class families and are generally doing extremely well in school and in life."
The study was published in the journal 'Psychiatry Research'.
