Flu / Immune System Activation During Pregnancy Increases Risk of Schizophrenia / Psych Disorders

Another study confirming that flu and other infections during pregnancy are a very bad thing for the brain of the unborn child. Its very important to get Flu vaccine shots BEFORE any potential pregnancy to reduce this risk.

BACKGROUND:

In utero exposure to maternal viral infections is associated with a higher incidence of psychiatric disorders with a supposed neurodevelopmental origin, including schizophrenia. Hence, immune response factors exert a negative impact on brain maturation that predisposes the offspring to the emergence of pathological phenotypes later in life.

CONCLUSIONS:

These results confirm that maternal immune activation severely impairs dopamine system and that the poly(I:C) model can be considered a proper animal model of a psychiatric condition that fulfills a multidimensional set of validity criteria predictive of a human pathology.

Source:

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This worries me, as my sister in law had a cold when pregnant. Iā€™ll be watching this child like a hawk though. Its too bad that Iā€™ll never win the lottery (I donā€™t play), so I wonā€™t be able to make huge donations to Sz research.

Saw this this morning. Truth be known, ANY stress (e.g.: alcoholism, drug abuse, financial worries, illness, injuries, etc.) during pregnancy is potentially harmful to the fetusā€¦ and if that fetus has a concentration of unfortunate geneticsā€¦ sigh.

A guy named Frank Lake was (I think) the first guy to write about this in the 1970s. He called it ā€œmaternal fetal stress syndrome.ā€

See Google

He was one of the first people who saw ā€œepigeneticā€ factors.

I donā€™t understand how is it possible to avoid stress for 36 weeks, considering not only physically but also emotionally very vulnerable state that pregnancy is. There are certain situations when the future mother is aware of the potential risks for her baby, so the stress about outcome is somehow naturaly included from the day first.
Really, it is nothing near ā€˜the blessed stateā€™ at all.

(Iā€™m a bit upset as my thoughts about my childā€™s bad genetics are striking again)

Its not. Low to moderate stress is fine. Its the really high levels of stress that are bad - for example if a husband is abusive towards a wife, or a woman is working 12 or 14 hour long days with poor sleep and becoming exhausted all the time.

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