Excessive stress is never a good thing, but new research suggests that children of women who suffered severe psychological stress during early pregnancy are more likely to develop schizophrenia.
Evidence that maternal stress might be implicated in schizophrenia susceptibility has been mounting, but until now no one knew which part of the pregnancy was important.
Medical records spanning the short but violent Arab-Israeli conflict of 1967 enabled of New York University School of Medicine and colleagues to pin down when the damage was done.
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They analysed the medical records of over 88,000 people born in Jerusalem during the 鈥�60s and 鈥�70s. The researchers found that women whose mothers were in their second month of pregnancy during the war were 4.3 times more likely to develop schizophrenia later in life, and men 1.2 times more likely, than people born during more peaceful times. .
Vulnerable males
The second month of pregnancy seems to be the key period during which disruption of the brain鈥檚 development can lead to schizophrenia in later life.
As for why females seem more vulnerable, Malaspina speculates that more as a result of the stress, so never made it into the study in the first place. 鈥淢any studies have shown a change in the sex ratio of a population undergoing severe upheaval or stress, and that change is a loss of male fetuses,鈥� she notes.
Pregnant women under pressure need not panic; the levels of stress required are equivalent to those experienced during a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. Malaspina told 快猫短视频 that when the team looked separately at women who were subjected to direct shelling, they found a 30-fold increased risk of having offspring with schizophrenia, suggesting that the risk depends on the severity of stress the woman is subjected to.
鈥淭his is about very extreme levels of stress and should not be generalised to day-to-day living stresses.鈥�
Journal reference: BMC Psychiatry
