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The epigenetics of perinatal stress


Early life adversity is associated with long-term effects on physical and mental health later in life, but the mechanisms are yet unclear. Epigenetic mechanisms program cell-type-specific gene expression during development, enabling one genome to be programmed in many ways, resulting in diverse stab...

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Autor principal: Szyf, Moshe
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Les Laboratoires Servier 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6952743/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31949404
http://dx.doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2019.21.4/mszyf
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author Szyf, Moshe
author_facet Szyf, Moshe
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description Early life adversity is associated with long-term effects on physical and mental health later in life, but the mechanisms are yet unclear. Epigenetic mechanisms program cell-type-specific gene expression during development, enabling one genome to be programmed in many ways, resulting in diverse stable profiles of gene expression in different cells and organs in the body. DNA methylation, an enzymatic covalent modification of DNA, has been one of the principal epigenetic mechanisms investigated. Emerging evidence is consistent with the idea that epigenetic processes are involved in embedding the impact of early-life experience in the genome and mediating between social environments and later behavioral phenotypes. Whereas there is evidence supporting this hypothesis in animal studies, human studies have been less conclusive. A major problem is the fact that the brain is inaccessible to epigenetic studies in humans and the relevance of DNA methylation in peripheral tissues to behavioral phenotypes has been questioned. In addition, human studies are usually confounded with genetic and environmental heterogeneity and it is very difficult to derive causality. The idea that epigenetic mechanisms mediate the life-long effects of perinatal adversity has attractive potential implications for early detection, prevention, and intervention in mental health disorders will be discussed.

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spelling pubmed-69527432020-01-16 The epigenetics of perinatal stress
 Szyf, Moshe Dialogues Clin Neurosci Original Article Early life adversity is associated with long-term effects on physical and mental health later in life, but the mechanisms are yet unclear. Epigenetic mechanisms program cell-type-specific gene expression during development, enabling one genome to be programmed in many ways, resulting in diverse stable profiles of gene expression in different cells and organs in the body. DNA methylation, an enzymatic covalent modification of DNA, has been one of the principal epigenetic mechanisms investigated. Emerging evidence is consistent with the idea that epigenetic processes are involved in embedding the impact of early-life experience in the genome and mediating between social environments and later behavioral phenotypes. Whereas there is evidence supporting this hypothesis in animal studies, human studies have been less conclusive. A major problem is the fact that the brain is inaccessible to epigenetic studies in humans and the relevance of DNA methylation in peripheral tissues to behavioral phenotypes has been questioned. In addition, human studies are usually confounded with genetic and environmental heterogeneity and it is very difficult to derive causality. The idea that epigenetic mechanisms mediate the life-long effects of perinatal adversity has attractive potential implications for early detection, prevention, and intervention in mental health disorders will be discussed.
 Les Laboratoires Servier 2019-12 /pmc/articles/PMC6952743/ /pubmed/31949404 http://dx.doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2019.21.4/mszyf Text en © 2019, AICH Servier GroupCopyright © 2019 AICH Servier Group. All rights reserved http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Article
Szyf, Moshe
The epigenetics of perinatal stress

title The epigenetics of perinatal stress

title_full The epigenetics of perinatal stress

title_fullStr The epigenetics of perinatal stress

title_full_unstemmed The epigenetics of perinatal stress

title_short The epigenetics of perinatal stress

title_sort epigenetics of perinatal stress

topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6952743/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31949404
http://dx.doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2019.21.4/mszyf
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