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In-Utero Exposure to Bereavement and Offspring IQ: A Danish National Cohort Study

BACKGROUND: Intelligence is a life-long trait that has strong influences on lifestyle, adult morbidity and life expectancy. Hence, lower cognitive abilities are therefore of public health interest. Our primary aim was to examine if prenatal bereavement measured as exposure to death of a close family...

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Autores principales: Virk, Jasveer, Obel, Carsten, Li, Jiong, Olsen, Jørn
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3928249/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24558394
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088477
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author Virk, Jasveer
Obel, Carsten
Li, Jiong
Olsen, Jørn
author_facet Virk, Jasveer
Obel, Carsten
Li, Jiong
Olsen, Jørn
author_sort Virk, Jasveer
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Intelligence is a life-long trait that has strong influences on lifestyle, adult morbidity and life expectancy. Hence, lower cognitive abilities are therefore of public health interest. Our primary aim was to examine if prenatal bereavement measured as exposure to death of a close family member is associated with the intelligence quotient (IQ) scores at 18-years of age of adult Danish males completing a military cognitive screening examination. METHODS: We extracted records for the Danish military screening test and found kinship links with biological parents, siblings, and maternal grandparents using the Danish Civil Registration System (N = 167,900). The prenatal exposure period was defined as 12 months before conception until birth of the child. We categorized children as exposed in utero to severe stress (bereavement) during prenatal life if their mothers lost an elder child, husband, parent or sibling during the prenatal period; the remaining children were included in the unexposed cohort. Mean score estimates were adjusted for maternal and paternal age at birth, residence, income, maternal education, gestational age at birth and birth weight. RESULTS: When exposure was due to death of a father the offsprings' mean IQ scores were lower among men completing the military recruitment exam compared to their unexposed counterparts, adjusted difference of 6.5 standard IQ points (p-value = 0.01). We did not observe a clinically significant association between exposure to prenatal maternal bereavement caused by death of a sibling, maternal uncle/aunt or maternal grandparent even after stratifying deaths only due to traumatic events. CONCLUSION: We found maternal bereavement to be adversely associated with IQ in male offspring, which could be related to prenatal stress exposure though more likely is due to changes in family conditions after death of the father. This finding supports other literature on maternal adversity during fetal life and cognitive development in the offspring.
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spelling pubmed-39282492014-02-20 In-Utero Exposure to Bereavement and Offspring IQ: A Danish National Cohort Study Virk, Jasveer Obel, Carsten Li, Jiong Olsen, Jørn PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Intelligence is a life-long trait that has strong influences on lifestyle, adult morbidity and life expectancy. Hence, lower cognitive abilities are therefore of public health interest. Our primary aim was to examine if prenatal bereavement measured as exposure to death of a close family member is associated with the intelligence quotient (IQ) scores at 18-years of age of adult Danish males completing a military cognitive screening examination. METHODS: We extracted records for the Danish military screening test and found kinship links with biological parents, siblings, and maternal grandparents using the Danish Civil Registration System (N = 167,900). The prenatal exposure period was defined as 12 months before conception until birth of the child. We categorized children as exposed in utero to severe stress (bereavement) during prenatal life if their mothers lost an elder child, husband, parent or sibling during the prenatal period; the remaining children were included in the unexposed cohort. Mean score estimates were adjusted for maternal and paternal age at birth, residence, income, maternal education, gestational age at birth and birth weight. RESULTS: When exposure was due to death of a father the offsprings' mean IQ scores were lower among men completing the military recruitment exam compared to their unexposed counterparts, adjusted difference of 6.5 standard IQ points (p-value = 0.01). We did not observe a clinically significant association between exposure to prenatal maternal bereavement caused by death of a sibling, maternal uncle/aunt or maternal grandparent even after stratifying deaths only due to traumatic events. CONCLUSION: We found maternal bereavement to be adversely associated with IQ in male offspring, which could be related to prenatal stress exposure though more likely is due to changes in family conditions after death of the father. This finding supports other literature on maternal adversity during fetal life and cognitive development in the offspring. Public Library of Science 2014-02-18 /pmc/articles/PMC3928249/ /pubmed/24558394 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088477 Text en © 2014 Virk et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Virk, Jasveer
Obel, Carsten
Li, Jiong
Olsen, Jørn
In-Utero Exposure to Bereavement and Offspring IQ: A Danish National Cohort Study
title In-Utero Exposure to Bereavement and Offspring IQ: A Danish National Cohort Study
title_full In-Utero Exposure to Bereavement and Offspring IQ: A Danish National Cohort Study
title_fullStr In-Utero Exposure to Bereavement and Offspring IQ: A Danish National Cohort Study
title_full_unstemmed In-Utero Exposure to Bereavement and Offspring IQ: A Danish National Cohort Study
title_short In-Utero Exposure to Bereavement and Offspring IQ: A Danish National Cohort Study
title_sort in-utero exposure to bereavement and offspring iq: a danish national cohort study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3928249/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24558394
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088477
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