Dr. Moshe Szyf's lab studied children exposed to the 1998 Quebec ice storm in utero and found lasting changes in their DNA methylation that affect immune function and insulin signaling. The differences persisted years later, suggesting prenatal stress may increase risk of immune disorders and diabetes.
November 2010.
Interesting interview in Functional Medicine Update with.
Dr. Moishe Sev from the McGill University Laboratories on stress.
You might recall that it was one of the most profound closes in that interview in that I asked him the.
Question whether epigenetic patterning in children that.
Had been exposed to war and violence could influence the rest of their life in terms of post traumatic stress syndrome. And he went on talking about the.
Global implications of stress in children and how that might silence certain genes and.
Alter gene expression patterns throughout the rest of our lives.
And this is kind of a way.
That one could actually see social pathology.
Occurring through a genomic expression patterning with a very, very traumatic environment. So with that as a context, some days things happen that just open your eyes to say, wow. And that's this article that just appeared in September of 2014 in the Journal PLOS One, again from the laboratories of Dr. Moishev and his colleagues at the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University Psychosocial research Division and the Douglas Hospital Research center, again focusing on epigenetics. And in this case, the story is equally intriguing and interesting. This has to do with the ice storm in Quebec, Canada in 1998, a.
Period of time where there was power outages and people huddled at home trying.
To keep warm with no heat and.
Very sub zero temperatures for an extended period of time.
So the question was, what about women.
That were pregnant during that period of time?
Could that have had any impact being exposed to that very hostile cold condition on their offspring? And lo and behold, in this particular.
Study, they went and they evaluated the.
Methylation patterns in T cells.
These are the immune cells in their.
Body that are turning over fairly rapidly and looked at these methylation patterns in.
The promoter regions of genes.
And lo and behold, in these children that were conceived during the ice storm in 1998 in Quebec, they found extraordinary differences in their methylation patterns than that of children that were born without that stress of pregnancy. And what are those loci that are related to the methylation patterns? They're none other than conditions that relate.
To immunity and conditions that relate to.
Insulin signaling, which suggests, and it's still early on, because these kids are just in their teenage years now, that possibly we should be looking at increased prevalence of diabetes and other immune related problems in these children.
It's not their genes that will be.
The problem, it will be the way.
Their genes are expressed as a consequence.
Of the exposure in utero to a very hostile environment, in this case extreme cold.
These are opening all sorts of questions.
About the interface between sociology and biology.
Sociobiology and its relationship into the expression.
Of patterns throughout our lives that we would call our disease patterns. These children, who may have actually very.
Good genes, may be locked into a.
Certain kind of expression pattern that needs very special attention by altering their later.
Stage diet, lifestyle and environment to minimize the expression of these characteristics that were.
Locked in during their pregnancy and the in utero experience. A very powerful example of what's happening right now in this personalized lifestyle healthcare movement.
