Pain killer Paracetamol (Acetaminophen) use in pregnancy linked to ADHD

Acetaminophen, also known as Paracetamol in UK or Tylenol in US, a common pain reliever considered safe for pregnant women, has been linked for the first time to an increased risk of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder in children, said a study, published Monday.

More studies are needed to confirm the findings, but experts said the research points to a new potential cause for the worldwide rise in cases of ADHD, a neuro-behavioural condition which has no known cause and affects as many as five percent of US children.

Women who took acetaminophen, also known as Paracetamol, while pregnant had a 37 percent higher risk of having a child who would be later given a hospital diagnosis of hyperkinetic disorder, a particularly severe form of ADHD, said the study in February 24 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics: doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.4914.

Compared to women who did not take Acetaminophen while pregnant, women who did also had a 29 percent higher chance of having children who were later prescribed medications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and a 13 percent higher chance of exhibiting ADHD-like behaviours by age seven.

Previous research has suggested that Acetaminophen can interfere with normal hormone function and may affect the developing fetal brain.

The painkiller has also been linked to a slightly increased risk in boys of cryptorchidism, a condition in which the testicles do not descend.

The latest research was based on survey data on more than 64,000 Danish women from 1996 to 2002.

More than half said they took Acetaminophen at least once during pregnancy.

Peer group experts cautioned that; 'The observational findings do not prove that taking Paracetamol or Tylenol-like pain relievers causes ADHD, only that a preliminary link between the two has appeared and would need to be confirmed by further research.'

Miriam Cooper

"Findings from this study should be interpreted cautiously and should not change practice," said an accompanying editorial in JAMA Pediatrics by Miriam Cooper and colleagues at the Cardiff University Institute of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences.

"However, they underline the importance of not taking a drug's safety for granted, especially during pregnancy."

The reasons the women took the painkillers could have also had a confounding effect on the outcome, they added.

The study was led by Zeyan Liew, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and was co-authored by Jorn Olsen of the University of Aarhus in Denmark.

Antidepressant drug use during pregnancy not linked to autism

Large study finds little connection between mother's use of drugs like Prozac and children's autism risk.

Despite some concerns to the contrary, children whose moms used antidepressants during pregnancy do not appear to be at increased risk of autism, a large new Danish study suggests.

The results, published Dec. 19 in the New England Journal of Medicine, offer some reassurance, experts said.

There have been some hints that antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) could be linked to autism.

SSRIs are the "first-line" drug against depression, and include medications such as fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft), citalopram (Celexa) and paroxetine (Paxil).

In one recent U.S. study, mothers' SSRI use during pregnancy was tied to a twofold increase in the odds that her child would have autism. A Swedish study saw a similar pattern, though the risk linked to the drugs was smaller.

But both studies included only small numbers of children who had autism and were exposed to antidepressants in the womb.

Anders Hviid

The new study is "the largest to date" to look at the issue, using records for more than 600,000 children born in Denmark, said lead researcher Anders Hviid, of the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen.

And overall, his team found, there was no clear link between SSRI use during pregnancy and children's autism risk.

Hviid cautioned that the finding is still based on a small number of children who had autism and prenatal exposure to an SSRI—52, to be exact.

The researchers noted that it's not possible to rule out a small increase in autism risk.

But, Hviid said, "at this point, I do not think this potential association should feature prominently when evaluating the risks and benefits of SSRI use in pregnancy."

Christina Chambers

Commenting on the findings, Christina Chambers, director of the Center for the Promotion of Maternal Health and Infant Development at the University of California, San Diego, stated, "I think this study is reassuring."

One "important" point, Chambers added, is that the researchers factored in mothers' mental health diagnoses—which ranged from depression to eating disorders to schizophrenia.

"How much of the risk is related to the medication, and how much is related to the underlying condition?" Chambers said. "It's hard to tease out."

More Information: 'Use of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors during Pregnancy and Risk of Autism': doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1301449

FASD: Alcohol during pregnancy causes impaired social skills in children

A recent study published in Child Neuropsychology has found that drinking alcohol while pregnant means your child is more likely to develop issues with social skills as they grow older.

The results of the study indicate that children with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) who do not have a global intellectual disability are at high risk of developing significant problems in a broad array of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social domains.

125 children aged between 6 and 12 participated in the study, 97 of whom met diagnostic criteria for a Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).

The children underwent a comprehensive multi-informant assessment of neurocognitive, emotional, social, behavioural, and adaptive functioning.

The results of the study indicated that the children who had prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE), returned significantly poorer scores compared to the non-exposed group on tests measuring executive functioning (the processes that help us connect past experience with present action, the skills we use for organization and planning), attention, working /visuospatial memory, linguistic abstraction, adaptive behaviour, emotional/behavioural functioning, and social cognition (understanding of why people do the things that they do).

The study showed that while the children with PAE and the non-exposed children attributed hostile intentions towards provocative behaviors by their peers, e.g. pushing and shoving, the children affected by PAE were more likely to attribute hostile intentions to situations that did not involve physical provocation e.g. asking if they can play and being told 'no'.

The parents of children with PAE also gave greater reports of inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive behavior and the children were shown to also be more likely to show depressive symptoms.

The group of children with PAE were also shown to have more social problems according to assessments involving parents and teachers. These results maintained their significance past controlling for IQ, demonstrating that relying on IQ alone to guide parental, peer, and school expectations may be misleading.

The study also notes that this may also suggest that the negative effects of PAE are above and beyond the control of intelligence.

The study concludes by suggesting that the results mean it is becoming increasingly more evident that there is a pressing need for early identification of social issues related to prenatal alcohol exposure and intervention in order to take advantage of the developing brain's plasticity and to maximise the likelihood of effecting meaningful functional improvement.

More information: Justin L. Quattlebaum & Mary J. O'Connora "Higher functioning children with prenatal alcohol exposure: Is there a specific neurocognitive profile?" Child Neuropsychology: A Journal on Normal and Abnormal Development in Childhood and Adolescence Volume 19, Issue 6, 2013 DOI: 10.1080/09297049.2012.713466

Maternal Smoking + asthma + pregnancy is a dangerous combination

New research from the University of Adelaide has shown for the first time that pregnant women who smoke as well as having asthma are greatly increasing the risk of complications for themselves and their unborn children.

In the first study of its kind in the world, researchers from the University's Robinson Institute compared data from more than 170,000 South Australian women over 10 years.

The results have been published online ahead of print in the European Respiratory Journal.

Nicolette Hodyl

Speaking during National Asthma Week, lead author Dr Nicolette Hodyl says: "We know that being pregnant and having asthma poses risks to both the mother and the baby."

"We know that smoking poses risks to both the mother and the baby but now we also know that the combination of these conditions represents a very dangerous situation."

"Asthma and smoking are separately linked during pregnancy to increased risk of bleeding from the birth canal before labour, urinary tract infections, premature rupture of membranes, low birth weight and preterm birth (less than 37 weeks of pregnancy)."

"The combination of asthma and smoking greatly increases the risk of these complications during pregnancy."

Dr Hodyl says 5.8% of pregnant women who were not asthmatic and non-smokers experienced a preterm birth. "For asthmatic women, the preterm birth rate increased to 6.5%. 

Among smoking women, 9.4% experienced preterm birth. And for asthmatic women who also smoked, the rate of preterm birth jumped to 12.7%, which is more than double the normal rate.

"This is an alarming statistic. We hope that pregnant women begin to understand the seriousness of this situation to their health and the health of their child," she says.

Dr Hodyl says the research also uncovered another worrying statistic: about a quarter of pregnant women with asthma are smokers.

"While the rates of smoking have been decreasing in recent years, it is very concerning to us that many pregnant women with asthma are also smoking," she says.

"Quitting smoking during pregnancy is very difficult, and therefore pregnant women need as much support as possible from family, friends and health professionals. Our results show that even a reduction in the number of cigarettes women smoke per day can lead to some improvement to the risks to their child. However, the potential for poor health outcomes for both the mother and child should not be underestimated."

More information: erj.ersjournals.com/

Autism Risk: Exposure to high pollution levels during pregnancy

Women in the U.S. exposed to high levels of air pollution while pregnant were up to twice as likely to have a child with autism as women who lived in areas with low pollution, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).

It is the first large national study to examine links between autism and air pollution across the U.S.

Andrea Roberts

"Our findings raise concerns since, depending on the pollutant, 20% to 60% of the women in our study lived in areas where risk of autism was elevated," said lead author Andrea Roberts, research associate in the HSPH Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

The study appeared online June 18, 2013 in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Exposure to diesel particulates, lead, manganese, mercury, methylene chloride and other pollutants are known to affect brain function and to affect the developing baby.

Two previous studies found associations between exposure to air pollution during pregnancy and autism in children, but those studies looked at data in just three locations in the U.S.

The researchers examined data from Nurses' Health Study II, a long-term study based at Brigham and Women's Hospital involving 116,430 nurses that began in 1989.

Among that group, the authors studied 325 women who had a child with autism and 22,000 women who had a child without the disorder.

They looked at associations between autism and levels of pollutants at the time and place of birth. They used air pollution data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to estimate women's exposure to pollutants while pregnant.

They also adjusted for the influence of factors such as income, education, and smoking during pregnancy.

The results showed that women who lived in the 20% of locations with the highest levels of diesel particulates or mercury in the air were twice as likely to have a child with autism as those who lived in the 20% of areas with the lowest levels.

Other types of air pollution—lead, manganese, methylene chloride, and combined metal exposure—were associated with higher autism risk as well.

Women who lived in the 20% of locations with the highest levels of these pollutants were about 50% more likely to have a child with autism than those who lived in the 20% of areas with the lowest concentrations.

Most pollutants were associated with autism more strongly in boys than girls. However, since there were few girls with autism in the study, the authors said this finding should be examined further.

Marc Weisskopf

Senior author Marc Weisskopf, associate professor of environmental and occupational epidemiology at HSPH, said, "Our results suggest that new studies should begin the process of measuring metals and other pollutants in the blood of pregnant women or newborn children to provide stronger evidence that specific pollutants increase risk of autism. A better understanding of this can help to develop interventions to reduce pregnant women's exposure to these pollutants."

UK Pregnancy safety advice prompts criticism

The UK Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has been criticised for saying pregnant women may want to "play it safe" and avoid chemicals found in many common household products.

It says there is not enough information about the chemical risks to foetuses from cosmetics and food packaging.

Items which it suggests should be avoided include tinned food, ready meals, shower gel and even new cars.

Critics say the advice is unhelpful, unrealistic and alarmist.

The RCOG says its paper on the issue is informing women and filling a void - until now, there has been no official advice for pregnant and breastfeeding women to turn to.

It is unlikely that any of the exposures are truly harmful for most babies, say the report's authors, and, based on current evidence, it is impossible to give an accurate assessment of risk.

Nevertheless, they say women should make an informed choice and at the same time "not wrap themselves up in a bubble".

'Empower not scare'
They say pregnant women can be exposed to a complex mixture of hundreds of chemicals at low levels through the food they eat and the everyday products they use.

Chemicals, such as bisphenol A and phthalates, can leach into food packaging and containers, including food and beverage cans and plastic-wrapped ready meals, say the authors, Dr Michelle Bellingham and Professor Richard Sharpe.

What risks?

• Chemicals can enter your body through your skin or when you breathe, eat or drink
• Your baby is exposed if the chemical passes from your blood, through the placenta
• There is no consensus about which common household chemicals are harmful or whether they need to be avoided
• Bisphenol A is found in drink and food cans, while phthalates are found in plastics, carpets, fabrics, cosmetics and new cars
• Smoking and drinking too much alcohol can harm the baby
• Experts agree that there are some foods - certain fish, for example - that you should avoid or cut down on when you're pregnant because they might make you ill or harm your baby

Among other warnings:

• Cosmetic products and toiletries such as moisturisers, shower gel and sunscreen could, theoretically, also pose a chemical risk
• Cleaning products, air fresheners and non-stick frying pans can be added to the hazard list
• Pregnant women might also want to avoid decorating the new baby's room with fresh paint as breathing the fumes may be harmful

And do not assume natural or herbal products or remedies are safe, say the authors.

Prof Sharpe said: "For most environmental chemicals we do not know whether or not they really affect a baby's development, and obtaining definitive guidance will take many years.

"This paper outlines a practical approach that pregnant women can take, if they are concerned about this issue and wish to 'play safe' in order to minimise their baby's exposure."

He said women should not be alarmed and that the potential risks were likely to be small.

Dr Bellingham added that the paper was primarily aimed at health professionals advising women at ante-natal classes.

"We are trying to empower women, not scare them. There is a void at the moment in terms of information about chemicals," she said.

But many expert organisations were quick to criticise the RCOG advice.

Tracey Brown, of Sense About Science, said: "Pregnancy is a time when people spend a lot of time and money trying to work out which advice to follow, and which products to buy or avoid. The simple question parents want answered during pregnancy is: 'Should we be worried?' "

"What we need is help in navigating these debates about chemicals and pregnancy. Disappointingly, the RCOG report has ducked this."

Rosemary Dodds, Senior Policy Officer with the UK National Childbirth Trust, said it was unacceptable that pregnant women today were still having to make decisions without clear information on possible risks.

Janet Fyle, Professional Policy Advisor with the UK Royal College of Midwives, said pregnant women must take the advice with caution and use their common sense and judgement and not be unnecessarily alarmed about using personal care products, such as moisturisers, cosmetics and shower gels.

"There needs to be more scientific and evidence-based research into the issues and concerns raised by this paper," she said.

'No need to worry'
Dr John Harrison, director of Public Health (HPA) England's Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards, said: "We agree that it would be sensible for pregnant women to avoid using hazardous chemicals such as pesticides or fungicides as a precaution, or in line with product information. However, there is no evidence to suggest that chemicals in items such as personal care products are a risk to public health."

Dr Chris Flower of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association (CTPA) said there was no need for anyone - pregnant or otherwise - to worry.

"The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has advised pregnant women to take a 'safety first' approach to cosmetic products and the good news is that there are already strict laws in place for cosmetics that allow us all to do just that."

He said a full safety assessment of every cosmetic product and all its ingredients was undertaken before a product could go on the market and, by law, all of the ingredients in a cosmetic product had to be listed on its packaging.

Good kidney health begins before birth

Researchers have found that conditions in the womb can affect kidney development and have serious health implications for the child not only immediately after birth, but decades later. 

In a paper published today in The Lancet an international team, including Monash University's Professor John Bertram and the University of Queensland's Professor Wendy Hoy, reviewed existing, peer-reviewed research on kidney health and developmental programming - the effects of the in utero environment on adult health.

Wendy Hoy

The accumulated evidence linked low birth weight and prematurity - risk factors for high blood pressure and chronic kidney disease later in life - with low numbers of the kidney's filtration units or nephrons.

In Australia, around 30 per cent of the adult population has high blood pressure and one in nine has at least one clinical symptom of chronic kidney disease.

The incidence of both diseases is significantly higher in Indigenous populations. Professor Bertram, Head of the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, has been researching nephrons for two decades.

"The kidney is particularly sensitive to life before birth because we stop making nephrons at 36 weeks gestation. So, for a baby born at term, the process of nephron formation is finished and it cannot be restarted," Professor Bertram said.

John Bertram

Humans are born with an average of one million nephrons and lose up to 6000 each year. However, Professor Bertram's research has shown there is a huge variance in nephron number - from just over 200,000 to around two million.

Further, nephron number is positively related to birth weight - a low birth weight equates to low nephron number and larger babies have a higher nephron number.

Given that low birth weight occurs in 15 per cent of live births worldwide, the study has implications for maternal health and clinical screening processes.

"In terms of maternal health during pregnancy, things like a high fat diet, alcohol consumption, various antibiotics and stress hormones have been shown to have a negative impact on foetal kidney development, although more research needs to be done," Professor Bertram said.

"Further, given the strong associations between birth weight, nephron number and disease later in life, and the fact that a baby's weight is routinely recorded in many countries, we suggest that birth weight should be a parameter that clinicians use to determine how often a patient is screened for kidney function or given a blood pressure test.

"Although a newborn may appear perfect, if their birth weight is low, there may be consequences 40 years down the line. We could be proactive about detecting these diseases in the early stages."

The Power of a Mother's touch

Mothers who stroke their baby's body in the first few weeks after birth may change the effects that stress during pregnancy can have on an infant's early-life development, researchers have found.

Researchers at the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester, and Kings College, London have been studying whether stress in pregnancy can lead to emotional and behavioural problems in children for many years.

Attention is now moving towards how parents might alter these effects after birth.

Researchers are aiming to improve understanding of the issues to help enhance information services for pregnant women and their partners.

Scientists believe that stress in pregnancy can have an effect on an infant in later life by reducing the activity of genes that play a role in stress response.

Studies of early care-giving in rats have found that high levels of mothers' licking and grooming their pups soon after birth can increase the activity of these genes and may reverse the effects of prenatal stress on their offspring.

Some studies suggest that impacts of prenatal stress on an infant's development can be either positive or negative depending on the type of environment a child encounters. It is thought that some children may experience the effects through being more prone to high levels of fear or anger.

The team at Liverpool, Manchester and London followed first-time mothers from pregnancy through to the first years of their children's lives as part of Medical Research Council (MRC) funded research, The Wirral Child Health and Development Study.

It showed that links between symptoms of depression in pregnancy and subsequent infant emotions of fear and anger, as well as heart rate response to stress at seven months of age changed by how often a mother stroked their baby on the head, back, legs and arms in the early weeks of life.

The results suggest that stroking may alter gene activity in a similar way to that reported in animals.

Dr Helen Sharp, from the University of Liverpool's Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, explains: "We are currently following up on the Wirral children in our study to see if reports of early stroking by their mothers continue to make a difference to developmental outcomes over time.

"The eventual aim is to find out whether we should recommend that mothers who have been stressed during pregnancy should be encouraged to stroke their babies early in life"

The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Chronic Stress in Pregnancy prevents brain benefits of motherhood

A new study in animals shows that chronic stress during pregnancy prevents brain benefits of motherhood, a finding that researchers suggest could increase understanding of postpartum depression.

Rat mothers showed an increase in brain cell connections in regions associated with learning, memory and mood.

In contrast, the brains of mother rats that were stressed twice a day throughout pregnancy did not show this increase.

The researchers were specifically interested in dendritic spines – hair-like growths on brain cells that are used to exchange information with other neurons.

Previous animal studies conducted by lead author Benedetta Leuner of Ohio State University showed that an increase of dendritic spines in new mothers’ brains was associated with improved cognitive function on a task that requires behavioral flexibility – in essence, enabling more effective multitasking.

The dendritic spines increased by about 20 percent in these brain regions in new mothers, according to her findings.

The stress in this new study negated those brain benefits of motherhood, causing the stressed rats’ brains to match brain characteristics of animals that had no reproductive or maternal experience.

The stressed rats also had less physical interaction with their babies than did unstressed rats, a behaviour observed in human mothers who experience postpartum depression.

“Animal mothers in our research that are unstressed show an increase in the number of connections between neurons. Stressed mothers don’t,” said Leuner, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Ohio State.

“We think that makes the stressed mothers more vulnerable. They don’t have the capacity for brain plasticity that the unstressed mothers do, and somehow that’s contributing to their susceptibility to depression.”


Previous research has suggested that there are a number of risk factors for postpartum depression, including hormone fluctuations, prior history of mental illness and environmental factors such as smoking or low socioeconomic status.

One of the strongest predictors, however, is chronic stress during pregnancy, so Leuner sought to create an animal model that could help explain brain changes linked to postpartum depression.

“It’s devastating not only for the mother, because it affects her well-being, but previous research also has shown that children of depressed mothers have impaired cognitive and social development, may have impaired physical development, and are more likely as adults to have depression or anxiety,” she said.

“A better understanding of postpartum depression is important to help the mother but also to prevent some of the damaging effects that this disorder can have on the child.”

The researchers exposed pregnant rats to stress twice a day by limiting their mobility on some days and on other days placing them in water. For three weeks after the rats gave birth, Leuner and colleagues monitored the rats.

The animals showed classic signs of the effects of stress, including lower than normal weight gain and enlarged adrenal glands, a sign of high stress-hormone production. The mothers stressed during pregnancy also gave birth to smaller pups.

“And they were not very good mothers,” Leuner said. After separation from pups for 30 minutes, unstressed mothers would gather up their babies, put them in the nest and nurse them. Stressed mother rats left the pups scattered around, wandered around the cage and fed the babies less frequently.

The stressed mother rats also exhibited more floating than unstressed rats in a water test; animals that float rather than swim are showing depressive-like symptoms.

“These findings in rats mimic some of the symptoms that are seen in women with postpartum depression,” Leuner said.

An examination of the animals’ brains showed that the rats exposed to chronic stress did not grow the additional dendritic spines in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex that the unstressed mother rats did.

The stressed rats’ brains more closely resembled the brains of control rats that had never been mothers.

“We don’t yet know what the exact trigger is for the increase in spines in motherhood, but we know that the increase goes away with stress,” Leuner said.

She is continuing the work by investigating whether the beneficial effects of motherhood on cognitive functions are also blocked in mothers who are exposed to pregnancy stress as well as whether hormonal factors play a role.

A Step Closer to Resolving Birth Defects

Scientists have made a landmark discovery that could help women minimize or even avoid the risk of having a baby born with congenital birth defects. The study is published April 5 in the international journal Cell.

The scientists, from universities in Australia, Japan, Canada and the United States, including Arizona State University, show for the first time how “nature” and “nurture” interact to increase the severity and likelihood of developing birth defects, including abnormalities in the heart, kidneys, brain, limbs and cranio‐facial regions (cleft palate).

They show how hypoxia, or a period of low oxygen during pregnancy, combined with a genetic risk factor of having only one functioning copy of a gene, dramatically increases the chances of a baby being born with congenital scoliosis, a malformation of the spine that affects around 1 in 1,000.

Sally Dunwoodie, head of the Embryology Laboratory at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney, Australia, a professor at the University of New South Wales and the senior author on the study, says the findings take us a step closer to understanding why some people in families develop diseases and others don’t, and, importantly, simple strategies that mothers could adopt to help prevent such defects occurring.

“We’ve long suspected that it is genes or our environment that cause birth defects, but up until now, the majority of these have been largely unknown,” says Dunwoodie. “This is the first time anyone in the world has shown that both ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’, in combination, are molecularly responsible for causing many birth defects.”

“This research is hugely exciting and will help us to genetically diagnose a whole range of birth defects, and give advice to women on how and when to avoid certain activities when pregnant,” says Dunwoodie. “We hope it will eventually lead to the development of therapeutics to stop these defects occurring in the first place.”

Hypoxia during pregnancy can be caused by a range of circumstances including poorly controlled sugar levels in diabetics, smoking, high altitude, prescription and recreational drug‐use, anemia or a poorly functioning placenta.

“Just as genetic studies of selected families led to the discovery of genes causing breast cancer, this study of the genetics and development of congenital scoliosis will lead to breakthroughs in finding the factors that cause scoliosis, a disorder affecting up to 3 percent of the general population,” says co-author Kenro Kusumi, an associate professor in the School of Life Sciences in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

One of the largest genetic studies focused on congenital scoliosis was led by Kusumi’s group. Together with clinical collaborators in Philadelphia and Toronto, the group identified the first case of a patient with congenital scoliosis due to having a single defective copy of the HES7 gene. Previous studies in mice had established that disruptions in this gene could lead to spinal defects, and loss of both copies of this gene had been found in severe cases of spinal deformities. The type of defect found in the patient in the ASU study was shown by Dunwoodie’s group to clearly affect the ability of the protein to function normally. This finding meant that having just one, instead of two functioning copies of a known gene from either mother or father, was a major risk factor for causing the abnormal formation of vertebrae in embryonic development.

Dunwoodie’s group then went on to test the genetic risk factor in a mouse model combined with an environmental insult in the form of hypoxia. Surprisingly, they found a marked increase in spinal abnormalities in the offspring, when the mothers were exposed to only 8 hours of low oxygen during an entire 21‐day pregnancy.

“We found that the combination of the genetic risk as well as exposure to low oxygen, resulted in our subjects being up to 10 times more likely to develop congenital scoliosis, than those that only had the genetic risk factor,” says Dunwoodie.

“What this brief period of low oxygen essentially did was disrupt the pathway responsible for development of the spine, and we know that the same pathway is used in the development of limbs and many organs, including the heart, kidneys, brain and cranio‐facial region,” adds Dunwoodie.

Bob Graham, a professor and executive director of the cardiac research institute, says around 25 percent of patients with congenital scoliosis also have some form of congenital heart defect, indicating that a single environmental ‘insult’ such as hypoxia, can potentially affect the development of more than one organ in the body.

“This study provides a new paradigm for the interaction between our genes and environment, and may account for a lot of diseases that we haven’t understood before, such as many different forms of congenital heart disease, and conditions like hair‐lip or cleft palate,” says Graham.

Kusumi points to a recent genetic study of over 50,000 identical twins that emphasizes that the risk of developing disease arises from the environment acting together with a person’s unique genome. “For scoliosis, our study highlights how environmental conditions, such as lack of oxygen reaching the developing embryo, could interact uniquely with each individual’s genetic differences to increase the risk of birth defects,” said Kenro.

“It may not necessarily be a lack of oxygen that allows the underlying gene defect to be revealed, it could be a lot of other environmental factors, such as anemia or lack of folate. But the message is, if you have family history of disease or you know you have a defective gene, mums need to be extra careful during pregnancy,” adds Graham.

The team of researchers has begun working on similar studies in congenital heart defects, which affect around 1 in every 100 babies born world-wide every year.

Toxoplasma Gondii: How your cat could be making you ‘crazy’

It’s long been known that a microbe found in cat's can harm people with weakened immune systems, such as people with AIDS.

It’s also been known that pregnant women should avoid cat litter so they don’t catch the microbe, lest they pass it on to their babies, causing brain damage in the infants or even death.

The microbe in question is Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii or Toxo for short).

New research from an unconventional scientist is showing that in certain circumstances, the microbe can alter our basic personalities, making us more or less outgoing, trusting and fearful, and even making us more prone to schizophrenia, car crashes and suicides.

The circumstances that create this possibility are as follows;

• We have to be infected by the microbe
• Our bodies will eventually overcome it, 
• But the parasite can lay dormant,
• and the danger lies in whether it lodges or travels to our brain cells

The researcher, the Czech evolutionary biologist Jaroslav Flegr, claims that when you consider all its impacts, “Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year.”

Read more of this article here: How your cat could be making you ‘crazy’

Antidepressants During Pregnancy: What Are the Risks?

What is a woman struggling with depression supposed to do when she becomes pregnant?

A study published on Monday in the Archives of General Psychiatry tackles the tough decision of deciding to keep taking the medication, or risk harming the fetus.

Roughly six percent of pregnant women are taking antidepressants. The struggle to live with depression or risk your baby's health has plagued women for quite some time.

The latest study included 7,696 pregnant women. Five hundred and seventy of the women suffering from depression were not on medication, and 99 women with depression "were being treated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a common class of antidepressants."

What this study found is that women going untreated for depression gave birth to babies that had a reduction in total body growth.

This affected the fetal head growth as well. Those women taking prenatal SSRI also had babies that suffered from a reduced growth of the fetal head, but the overall growth of the body during pregnancy was not affected.

What are the risks for the fetus during pregnancy with antidepressants? Mothers taking antidepressants could have preterm babies, who face higher health risks like respiratory and gastrointestinal disorders.

Not only could these children be born preterm, but according to the authors of the study, reduced fetal head-growth can lead to behavioural problems and psychiatric disorders later on.

However, the risks for the mother may outweigh the risks of the pregnancy, if she discontinues antidepressant medication.

Dr. Sudeepta Varma, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at NYU Langone School of Medicine reported "If we are talking about a woman who can't take care of her health as a result of battling with moderate to severe depression, she faces risks to herself as well as the baby that are associated with untreated depression during pregnancy."

According to Varma, "if you don't take care of the mom, there may be no baby to speak of."

These findings however are inconclusive according to the authors of the study. "More long-term drug safety studies are needed before evidence-based recommendations can be derived," concluded the authors.

Malaria treatment: Impact on disease risk for babies

Mothers who receive treatment for malaria infection could pass on lower levels of natural immunity to their babies, a study has suggested.

Edinburgh University experts found mice treated with malaria infection drugs before they became pregnant passed on fewer antibodies to their young.

Full-blown malaria gives the immune system the chance to produce protective antibodies to pass on.

However, it is thought the drug treatment shortens the process.

The mothers benefit while children's immunity is decreased, putting them at greater risk.

The researchers said their results highlighted the need to look at how treatment might be tailored most effectively for women and their babies.

Malaria affects millions of people worldwide, mainly in developing countries. One child dies from the disease in Africa every minute.

Dr Vincent Staszewski, of Edinburgh University's school of biological sciences, said: "How an infection plays out in an individual can impact on the immunity of the next generation.

"Some treatments against disease before or during pregnancy might be beneficial for maternal health but impair infant survival."

The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, was funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society.

Anti-Depressants Increase Blood Pressure in Newborns

Antidepressant use in expecting mothers can cause their babies to develop pulmonary hypertension, a condition that increases blood pressure in the lungs, according to a study published Thursday in the British Medical Journal.

Babies born from mothers who took the most prescribed type of antidepressants, serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) during pregnancy were twice as likely to develop pulmonary hypertension compared with mothers who did not take the medications.

The study could impact about 1.5 percent of pregnant women in the U.S. - the percentage of expecting mothers who take the antidepressants more commonly known by their brand names of Zoloft, Paxil, and Celexa and Lexapro.

Researchers reviewed records from 6 million births from 1996 to 2007 in Nordic countries and found the risk of pulmonary hypertension doubled in infants whose mothers took SSIs.

Experts said that the risk remained low.

Poor Maternal Diet Increases Risk of Diabetes in babies

A new study showed that individuals who were not properly nourished while in the womb have reduced ability to store fact correctly later in life, putting them at a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes and other age-related diseases.

The findings could lead to new ways identifying people who are at a greater risk of developing these diseases, researchers said.

According to the team from the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit at the University of Leicester, the research showed that poor diet in the womb cause the individual's inability to store fats correctly as he matures.

Proper fat storage in the body is important, otherwise, these will be stored in the liver and muscle which could lead to diseases.

"One of the ways that our bodies cope with a rich modern western diet is by storing excess calories in fat cells.

When these cells aren't able to absorb the excess then fats get deposited in other places, like the liver, where they are much more dangerous and can lead to type 2 diabetes," said Professor Anne Willis of the MRC Toxicology Unit.

Researchers found that the process of storing excess calories in fat cells is controlled by a molecule called miR-483-3p, which produced at higher levels in individuals who had experienced a poor diet in their mother's wombs than those who were better nourished.

According to the team, miR-483-3p works by suppressing a protein called GDF3.

A study of a group of adult humans who were born with a low birth weight revealed that GDF3 protein was present at around only thirty percent of the levels found in people born at a normal

"It has been known for a while that your mother's diet during pregnancy plays an important role in your adult health, but the mechanisms in the body that underlie this aren't well understood.

We have shown in detail how one mechanism links poor maternal diet to diabetes and other diseases that develop as we age," according to Dr Susan Ozanne, a British Heart Foundation Senior Fellow, who led the work at the University of Cambridge.

"Improving people's diets and encouraging exercise is clearly the best way to combat the epidemic of diabetes and diet-related disease which is sweeping through our society.

However some people are at particular risk of these diseases, despite not looking visibly overweight.

This research will hopefully allow us to help these people to take precautionary steps to reduce their likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes," Professor Willis said.

The findings of the study was published in the journal Cell Death and Differentiation.

Acetaminophen and Asthma

The sharp worldwide increase in childhood asthma over the past 30 years has long perplexed researchers, who have considered explanations as varied as improved hygiene and immunizations. Over the last decade, however, a new idea has emerged.

The asthma epidemic accelerated in the 1980s, some researchers have noted, about the same time that aspirin was linked to Reye’s syndrome in children. Doctors stopped giving aspirin to children with fevers, opting instead for acetaminophen.

In a paper published in The Annals of Allergy and Asthma Immunology in 1998, Dr. Arthur Varner, then a fellow in the immunology training program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, argued that the switch to acetaminophen might have fueled the increase in asthma.

Since then, more than 20 studies have produced results in support of his theory, including a large analysis of data on more than 200,000 children that found an increased risk of asthma among children who had taken acetaminophen.


In November, Dr. John T. McBride, a pediatrician at Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio, published a paper in the journal Pediatrics arguing that the evidence for a link between acetaminophen and asthma is now strong enough for doctors to recommend that infants and children who have asthma (or are at risk for the disease) avoid acetaminophen.

Dr. McBride based his assertion on several lines of evidence. In addition to the timing of the asthma epidemic, he said, there is now a plausible explanation for how acetaminophen might provoke or worsen asthma, a chronic inflammatory condition of the lungs.


Even a single dose of acetaminophen can reduce the body’s levels of glutathione, an enzyme that helps repair oxidative damage that can drive inflammation in the airways, researchers have found.

“Almost every study that’s looked for it has found a dose-response relationship between acetaminophen use and asthma,” Dr. McBride said. “The association is incredibly consistent across age, geography and culture.”

A statistical link between acetaminophen and asthma has turned up in studies of infants, children and adults. Studies have also found an increased risk of asthma in children whose mothers who took acetaminophen during pregnancy.


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Mother’s antibody attack linked to autism

"Now we not only have a marker, but we are starting to understand the actual mechanisms of what causes autism. 

These findings can greatly enhance our understanding of the origins of some cases of autism and may directly lead to screening tests and treatments to prevent it," says Daniel B. Campbell, one of the study's principal investigators.

The research is the first to demonstrate a genetic mechanism at play in the development of autism, raising the possibility of a genetic test for women at risk, according to the study published online in the journal Translational Psychiatry.

“Our study gives strong support for the idea that, in at least some cases, autism results from maternal immunity gone overboard,” says Judy Van de Water, professor of internal medicine at the University of California, Davis, who is affiliated with the MIND Institute.

“This is the first time that a genetic factor known to be important in autism and its effects have been demonstrated.”

For the study, Van de Water and colleagues examined the action of the MET gene, which has a known association with autism, among 200 mothers of children with autism and 150 mothers of typically developing children enrolled in the Northern California-based Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment (CHARGE) Study.

All of the study participants were between 2 and 5 years of age at the time of study enrollment, lived with one biological parent, and spoke either English or Spanish.

The researchers found that the C-allele of the MET gene is more common in mothers with several immunologic abnormalities that might contribute to the development of autism.  Analysis of the MET C-allele is a method of determining susceptibility for immune dysregulation in the mothers.

One abnormality they attributed to the MET C-allele is the presence of antibodies against fetal brain proteins in the blood of the mothers.

These brain-attacking antibodies occur in some mothers with an autistic child, but are not found in mothers of typically developing children.

It is believed that these antibodies somehow injure the developing brain of the fetus, and in some instances may cause autism.

Researchers do not yet know when or how the antibodies are formed, or precisely what happens to the brain tissue exposed to them, but based on a collaborative paper with Loren Martin at Azuza Pacific University, they appear to have pathologic significance, or a functional effect on brain development, changing the way the brain develops.

Van de Water and her group are still working on the precise effect of these maternal antibodies on the developing brain.

MET protein levels were also found to be reduced in cells from mothers with one C-allele and one normal allele, and were even lower in those with two C-alleles. Lower MET protein on the cell surface may increase susceptibility to a more intense and prolonged immune response when the cells are activated, like exposure to a bacteria or virus.

This, in turn, could make these individuals more prone to forming antibodies against “self” proteins, such as those found in the fetal brain.