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Associations between maternal stress during pregnancy and offspring obesity risk later in life—A systematic literature review
Author(s) -
Lamichhane Nishan,
Olsen Nanna Julie,
Mortensen Erik Lykke,
Obel Carsten,
Heitmann Berit Lilienthal,
Händel Miicole
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
obesity reviews
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.845
H-Index - 162
eISSN - 1467-789X
pISSN - 1467-7881
DOI - 10.1111/obr.12951
Subject(s) - offspring , medicine , stressor , prenatal stress , psychosocial , medline , obesity , pregnancy , systematic review , meta analysis , environmental health , psychiatry , biology , biochemistry , genetics
Summary Exposure to prenatal stress is linked to health consequences in the offspring. The objective of this systematic review was to synthesize and critically appraise primary human studies that have examined the association between prenatal exposure to psychosocial stress, or adverse life events, stress hormones, and later risk of developing obesity. We searched Medline, Embase, ScienceDirect, WorldCat, and OpenGrey up to January 2019 to identify relevant literature. We critically appraised the identified studies, assessed their quality, and summarized their findings. From a total of 5930 search results and references of studies that authors considered pertinent, we identified 15 relevant studies among which three were of high quality and the rest were medium‐quality studies. We found direct association between exposure to stress in fetal life and different measures of obesity in the offspring in eight studies. The direct association was usually observed in studies that involved measurement of stress among mothers exposed to natural disasters. Due to lack of adequate and comparable data from the included studies, we did not conduct a meta‐analysis. We concluded that there may be direct association between prenatal stress and later obesity, but further research with more comparable sources of stressors is recommended.