Adults
could be at greater risk of becoming anxious and vulnerable to poor
mental health if they were deprived of certain hormones while developing
in the womb, according to new research by scientists at Cardiff and
Cambridge universities.
New research in mice has revealed the
role of the placenta in long-term programming of emotional behaviour and
the first-time scientists have linked changes in adult behaviour to
alterations in placental function.
Insulin-like growth factor-2 has been
shown to play a major role in foetal and placental development in
mammals, and changes in expression of this hormone in the placenta and
foetus are implicated in growth restriction in the womb.
“The growth of a baby is a very complex
process and there are lots of control mechanisms which make sure that
the nutrients required by the baby to grow can be supplied by the
mother,” according to Professor Lawrence Wilkinson, a behavioural
neuroscientist from Cardiff University’s School of Psychology who led
the research.
“We were interested in how disrupting
this balance could influence emotional behaviours a long time after
being born, as an adult,” he added.
In order to explore how a mismatch
between supply and demand of certain nutrients might affect humans,
Prof. Wilkinson and his colleagues, Dr. Trevor Humby, Mikael Mikaelsson —
both also from Cardiff University — and Dr. Miguel Constancia of
Cambridge University, examined the behaviour of adult mice with a
malfunctioned supply of a vital hormone.
Dr. Humby added: “We achieved this by
damaging a hormone called Insulin-like growth factor-2, important for
controlling growth in the womb. What we found when we did this was an
imbalance in the supply of nutrients controlled by the placenta, and
that this imbalance had major effects on how subjects were during
adulthood — namely, that subject became more anxious later in life.”
Source: Science Daily
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