Prenatal undernutrition and cognitive function in late adulthood

At the end of World War II, a severe 5-mo famine struck the cities in the western part of The Netherlands. At its peak, the rations dropped to as low as 400 calories per day. In 1972, cognitive performance in 19-y-old male conscripts was reported not to have been affected by exposure to the famine before birth. In the present study, we show that cognitive function in later life does seem affected by prenatal undernutrition. We found that at age 56 to 59, men and women exposed to famine during the early stage of gestation performed worse on a selective attention task, a cognitive ability that usually declines with increasing age. We hypothesize that this decline may be an early manifestation of an accelerated cognitive aging process.

[1]  P. Rogers,et al.  Nutrition and mental performance , 1994, Proceedings of the Nutrition Society.

[2]  Lynn Hasher,et al.  Cognitive aging and increased distractibility: costs and potential benefits. , 2008, Progress in brain research.

[3]  E. Susser,et al.  Schizophrenia after prenatal famine. Further evidence. , 1996, Archives of general psychiatry.

[4]  J. Ridley.  Studies of Interference in Serial Verbal Reactions , 2001 .

[5]  Colin M. Macleod.  Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: an integrative review. , 1991, Psychological bulletin.

[6]  L. Kappelle,et al.  Are white matter lesions directly associated with cognitive impairment in patients with lacunar infarcts? , 1996, Journal of Neurology.

[7]  R. S. Kahn,et al.  Prenatal exposure to famine and brain morphology in schizophrenia , 2000, Schizophrenia Research.

[8]  T. Roseboom,et al.  The Dutch famine and its long-term consequences for adult health. , 2006, Early human development.

[9]  D. Royall,et al.  Alzheimer disease as a vascular disorder: nosological evidence. , 2002, Stroke.

[10]  J. Harding,et al.  The nutritional basis of the fetal origins of adult disease. , 2001, International journal of epidemiology.

[11]  P. Gressens,et al.  Different types of nutritional deficiencies affect different domains of spatial memory function checked in a radial arm maze , 2008, Neuroscience.

[12]  Avishai Henik,et al.  Schizophrenia and the stroop effect. , 2004, Behavioral and cognitive neuroscience reviews.

[13]  Linda Partridge,et al.  Extending Healthy Life Span—From Yeast to Humans , 2010, Science.

[14]  D. Bhat,et al.  Vitamin B12 Status of Pregnant Indian Women and Cognitive Function in their 9-year-old Children , 2008, Food and nutrition bulletin.

[15]  E. Susser,et al.  Schizoid personality disorder after prenatal exposure to famine. , 1996, The American journal of psychiatry.

[16]  J. Meulen.  Glucose tolerance in adults after prenatal exposure to famine , 2001, The Lancet.

[17]  D. Treiman,et al.  A standard international socio-economic index of occupational status , 1992 .

[18]  C Osmond,et al.  Obesity at the age of 50 y in men and women exposed to famine prenatally. , 1999, The American journal of clinical nutrition.

[19]  G. Huston.  The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. , 1987, The Journal of rheumatology.

[20]  H. Tsukagoshi,et al.  Cognitive functions in subjects with incidental cerebral hyperintensities. , 1994, European neurology.

[21]  M. Susser,et al.  Famine and Human Development: The Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944-1945 , 1975 .

[22]  Susan E Carlson,et al.  Maternal DHA and the development of attention in infancy and toddlerhood. , 2004, Child development.

[23]  R. Caselli,et al.  Cognitive frailty: Predementia syndrome and vascular risk factors , 2006, Neurobiology of Aging.

[24]  P. Leathwood,et al.  Effect of different regimens of early malnutrition on behavioural development and adult avoidance learning in Swiss white mice , 1975, British Journal of Nutrition.

[25]  John M. Davis,et al.  Maternal seafood consumption in pregnancy and neurodevelopmental outcomes in childhood (ALSPAC study): an observational cohort study , 2007, The Lancet.

[26]  Chi-Shing Tse,et al.  Predicting conversion to dementia of the Alzheimer's type in a healthy control sample: the power of errors in Stroop color naming. , 2010, Psychology and aging.

[27]  P. Fleming.  Famine and Human Development, The Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944/45, Z. Stein, M. Susser, G. Saenger, F. Marolla. Oxford University Press, 200 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016 (1975), 284 pp., $12.95 , 1976 .

[28]  B Kirman,et al.  Famine and Human Development , 1976 .

[29]  P. Gluckman,et al.  Glucose tolerance in adults after prenatal exposure to famine , 2001, The Lancet.

[30]  J. van Os.  Schizophrenia after prenatal famine. , 1997, Archives of general psychiatry.

[31]  B. Vellas,et al.  Caloric restriction and brain function , 2008, Current opinion in clinical nutrition and metabolic care.

[32]  Thomas E. Nichols,et al.  Anterior cingulate gyrus dysfunction and selective attention deficits in schizophrenia: [15O]H2O PET study during single-trial Stroop task performance. , 1997, The American journal of psychiatry.

[33]  C. Martyn,et al.  Growth in utero and cognitive function in adult life: follow up study of people born between 1920 and 1943 , 1996, BMJ.

[34]  P. Rogers,et al.  Incidental learning is impaired during early-life undernutrition. , 1986, Developmental psychobiology.

[35]  B. Chow,et al.  Maze studies on progeny of underfed mother rats. , 1970, The Journal of nutrition.

[36]  A Henik,et al.  Interpreting Stroop interference: an analysis of differences between task versions. , 2001, Neuropsychology.

[37]  Experience with Growth Hormone Therapy in Turner Syndrome in a Single Centre: Low Total Height Gain, No Further Gains after Puberty Onset and Unchanged Body Proportions , 2000, Hormone Research in Paediatrics.

[38]  S. DeKosky,et al.  Small head size is related to low Mini-Mental State Examination scores in a community sample of nondemented older adults , 1999, Neurology.

[39]  J. Os.  Schizophrenia After Prenatal Famine , 1997 .