Developmental Origins of Health and Disease Flashcards
What is meant by developmental programming of health and disease?
Environmental disturbances in early life during critical stages of development that alters development and predisposes to various kinds of diseases
Give one example of developmental programming of health and disease
Low birth weight (and therefore adverse nutrition in early life, incl. prenatally) correlates with increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
What are three early life exposures/factors associated with long term health issues?
- Cortisol exposure (if not properly deactivated by placenta) can result in reduced growth
- Higher paternal age increases autism risk
- Maternal smoking increases asthma risk
Multigenerational vs transgenerational effects
Multi: subsequent people/gametes of other generations are also affected
Transgenerational: no exposure, but changes genetically inherited
What are two mechanisms by which the effects of early life exposure can stick around later in life?
- Epigenetic changes (?define this)
- Altered cell kinetics (i.e. pattern/rate of division)
True or false: exposures that affect fetal hormones almost always affect birthweight (justify ur answer)
- False
- Development is affected by substrates (O2, nutrients etc), and by hormones, but hormones and nutrition aren’t always correlated
True or false: the timing of an exposure during maternal development is less critical than once thought (back your answer up with a story)
- False
- This is why babies who were conceived at different times had different outcomes following the Dutch hunger winter
What’s one example of an intervention to prevent developmental programming of disease that Sam Altman would’ve used?
- Enriched environment following preterm baby birth can help aid brain development
- (i.e. larger training set for initial gradient descent :))
