A study, published on March 25 in the medical journal Pediatrics, showed that stress in mothers before and during pregnancy may boost the risk of congenital heart defects in their children.
Although the findings are not entirely conclusive, there are several studies that show an association between stress during pregnancy and heart defects in newborns.
Dr. Edward McCabe, senior vice president and medical director of the March of Dimes, who is familiar with the results of the large new study, says "It suggests there needs to be continued investigation of this."
McCabe said he's not aware of any other research linking stress in mothers to a specific kind of birth defect.
What is a congenital heart defect?
Congenital heart defects, among the most common kinds of birth defect, include conditions such as holes in the heart and other kinds of problems. Most cases aren't fatal, McCabe said, and physicians can repair some kinds of problems with surgery. In other cases, the defects don't need to be fixed.
Researchers looked at 1.8 million children born in Denmark from 1978 to 2008 and found that congenital heart defects were more common in kids born to a specific group of about 45,000 women. These were women who had lost a parent, sibling, child or partner between the approximate time of conception and delivery.
Women in that group were slightly more likely than the other women to give birth to a child with a congenital birth defect, researchers found.
Why might stress in a mother cause birth defects?
Animal studies have shown that stress during the development of a fetus could affect heart development, Dr. Jorn Olsen, the study's co-author said.
It's also possible that stress could lead women to do things that are risky to their unborn children, such as changing to a less healthy diet. McCabe said another possibility is that stress alters the DNA of the child in the womb.
In the big picture, Olsen said, "this and other studies tell us to take care of pregnant women who experience severe stressful events shortly before or while they're pregnant."
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