According to a study published in the digital edition of the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" (PNAS), hunger in the first weeks of pregnancy affects the health of children in adulthood. However, hunger just before conception does not seem to affect them.
This is due to Prenatal exposure to hunger is marked in the baby's genes, and may lead to genetic changes that will affect health in middle age. We are talking about a situation of famine, which although it may seem very far away is the daily life of millions of women who do not live in the so-called 'first world'.
Scientists at the Medical Center of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands have found that children conceived during the Danish famine, caused by a six-month food embargo in the Netherlands during World War II, experienced detrimental effects on their health .
The authors discovered that children exposed to hunger during the first 10 weeks after conception had certain differential characteristics in genes compared to their same-sex siblings. The substances that control the amount of proteins that the cells synthesize, were found to a lesser extent in these cases.
According to the researchers, more studies are needed to determine if these genetic changes affect disease rates. In any case, it seems clear that proper nutrition is essential for both the mother and the future baby, before and after conception, before and after delivery.
