Schizophrenia risk rises for babies born in famine

	Tweet

Children born during China’s 1959-61 famine were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia, confirming a link between nutritional deficiency and the mental illness, according to new research.

Schizophrenia afflicts roughly 1 percent of the global population and tends to run in families, but the incidence of the illness has been found to have doubled during famines in China and the Netherlands.

The Chinese findings mirrored those from an earlier study of schizophrenia rates among people born in the Netherlands during the “Dutch Hunger Winter” of 1944-45.

Researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, examined records from around the city of Wuhu in Anhui Province, where the famine was acute and people starved to death in large numbers. The famine followed a season of bad weather and rural upheavals created by the government’s “Great Leap Forward.”

Out of more than 600,000 births during the period studied there were 4,600 schizophrenia cases. During the famine years, the birth rate declined 80 percent and the percentage of children who went on to develop schizophrenia rose from less than 1 percent to as high as 2.2 percent.

Study author Dr. David St. Clair wrote that “extreme stress” on prenatal development such as from a famine results in schizophrenia among those genetically predisposed to the illness. He cited a theory that the normally tightly regulated development of the brain can be disrupted by a nutritional deficiency.

Schizophrenia usually manifests itself in late adolescence or early adulthood and is present in all societies and racial groups, as reflected in the similar outcomes of the Chinese and Dutch famines, St. Clair wrote.

Writing in an accompanying editorial, Richard Neugebauer of the New York State Psychiatric Institute said the challenge is pinpointing what is missing from diets that could be an underlying cause of schizophrenia - and whether the deficiency can be compensated for.

RELATED STORIES:
Drunkenness rising in teen girls, Eastern Europeans   Relapse common after anorexia treatment   Eating berries may lower risk of Parkinson’s   Imaginary friends can boost maturity   Ex-smokers on their own in fending off a relapse   Facial expressions of emotion are innate, not learned, says new stud   Exercise may preserve immune response in older men   Drinking in middle age tied to impaired thinking   Research provides clues to neurodevelopemental disorders   Getting healthy: When does prediction help people change their habits?   New links among alcohol abuse, depression, obesity in young women found   External factors play part in schizophrenia

Comments

[ + Post Your Own ]

Now you're in the public comment zone. What follows is not Armenian Medical Network's stuff; it comes from other people and we don't vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.

There are no comments for this entry yet. [ + Comment here + ]