A stress-free pregnancy can deliver a popular child
by TAHIRA YAQOOB, Daily Mail

10:03am 9th November 2005

Stress free mum: ensures a happy child

All mothers-to-be wonder what kind of adult their baby will become.
Will their child grow into a sociable creature, for instance, bonding easily with others? Or will he or she struggle to make friends?

Scientists now believe they have discovered the key to ensuring a child’s success in forming relationships – their mother must avoid stress while pregnant.

Stressed mothers-to-be produce more of the male hormone testosterone, thought to be responsible for poor people and communication skills and even the condition autism.

So the secret to having a more sociable baby is to relax during pregnancy, say researchers.

The impact of stress on babies in the womb from as early as 13 weeks is thought to be so great it can lead to children being slower at picking up language skills, finding it harder to form relationships and being more inclined to develop obsessional traits.

In the extreme, they could show symptoms of autism, a neurological condition characterised by a difficulty in developing relationships and being obsessed with routine.

Foetuses produce testosterone naturally but are also affected by levels of the hormone in the surrounding amniotic fluid which come from the mother.

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, director of Cambridge University’s autism research centre, revealed his findings yesterday at a conference in London examining whether women made better leaders.

His team studied 100 children, from early in the womb to the age of seven, to see how testosterone levels have affected their development.

They found that even 24 hours after being born, boys – who have up to ten times as much testosterone as girls – were showing less interest in people and more interest in mechanical objects than females.

At 12 months, babies with higher levels of the hormone in the womb had poor eye contact with their parents.

And at 18 months, children with high pre-natal testosterone could not talk or had a limited vocabulary while other youngsters spoke up to 600 words.

When they started school, children with higher levels were finding it more difficult to socialise.

Professor Baron-Cohen said while testosterone was partly genetic, it was also present in fluctuating amounts in the amniotic fluid.

He added: “The mother’s level of stress is a factor in the testosterone level and makes it go up. We do not know what percentage of that level is genetic.

“What we do know is that the higher the level in the womb, the slower children are at making eye contact and developing language.

“Less testosterone means better human relationships. The differences may become even clearer as the children in our study get older.”

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday that in a study of 698 Danish children with the developmental disorder, researchers found a disproportionately high number had been born before the 35th week of pregnancy, had suffered from low birth weights and were in a breech position at birth.

The children, all of whom were born after 1972 and diagnosed with autism before 2000, also were more likely to have a parent who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia-like psychosis before the autism was discovered.

The study was partly funded by the CDC and published in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Previous research had suggested that perinatal factors, parental psychiatric history and socioeconomic status might represent or include risk factors for autism. The CDC, however, noted that the latest findings did not indicate a definitive link between autism and troubled births or other possible risk factors.

“At this point we don’t know for sure if these events are causes, but it certainly points us to look more closely at what happens during pregnancy as a possible opportunity for future prevention,” said Diana Schendel, a CDC epidemiologist and one of the authors.

The study came amid growing debate in the United States over the causes of autism, which permanently impairs development of those areas of the brain that control verbal and nonverbal communication as well as social interaction.

About one out of every 250 babies in the nation is born with the disability, which usually appears in the first three years of childhood, according to the Autism Society of America.

Some parents have claimed that their children developed autism due to exposure to childhood vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal, an organic compound that is 49 percent mercury.

Thimerosal was used routinely in the United States between the 1930s and the 1990s to prevent bacterial and fungal contamination of a wide range of infant vaccines, including those for hepatitis B.

Thimerosal is no longer used in childhood vaccines in the United States, but remains in the influenza vaccine and in vaccines in other countries.

The CDC, which launched a campaign earlier this year to make doctors and parents more aware of the need for early diagnosis of autism and other developmental disorders, said it had found no proof of a link between autism and vaccines.

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