It’s no secret that chronic stress can have a negative impact on your body.
According to the Mayo Clinic, it can harm your body and mind when the body’s stress response remains activated for too long.
This could lead to a number of issues down the line, including headaches, heart disease and a weakened immune system.
In pregnancy, chronic stress has also been linked to preterm birth, as well as other complications.
A new study suggests it may also influence a developing fetus’ brain.
Researchers studied pregnant mice exposed to chronic stress and examined what was happening in their placentas and fetal brains.
Through the study, they used different techniques to examine gene activity.
After examining the mice, they examined human placentas to see whether some of the biological patterns they observed were also present in humans.
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What they found was that chronic stress affected immune and antiviral signaling, cellular energy metabolism, gene-regulating processes involving chromatin and RNA, and processes involving the extracellular matrix, which surrounds and supports cells.
They also found that stress altered gene activity in the fetal mouse brains in ways that suggested neural cells were shifting toward premature maturation and connectivity.
The study suggests that chronic prenatal stress may alter the normal timing of early brain development, although the researchers did not establish that this occurs in human fetuses.