famine exposure

BACKGROUND: The early life stage is critical for the gut microbiota establishment and development. We aimed to investigate the lifelong impact of famine exposure during early life on the adult gut microbial ecosystem and examine the association of famine-induced disturbance in gut microbiota with type 2 diabetes. METHODS: We profiled the gut microbial composition among 11,513 adults (18-97 years) from three independent cohorts and examined the association of famine exposure during early life with alterations of adult gut microbial diversity and composition...

(1) Background: With increasing international travel and mass population displacement due to war, famine, climate change, and immigration, pathogens, such as Staphylococcus aureus ( S. aureus ), can also spread across borders. Methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) most commonly causes skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs), as well as more invasive infections. One clonal strain, S. aureus USA300, originating in the United States, has spread worldwide. We hypothesized that S. aureus USA300 would still be the leading clonal strain among US-born compared to non-US-born residents, even though risk factors for SSTIs may be similar in these two populations (2) Methods: In this study, 421 participants presenting with SSTIs were enrolled from six community health centers (CHCs) in New York City...

BACKGROUND: Evidence has shown that early-life famine exposure and obesity in adulthood are independently associated with the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). However, few studies had revealed the combined effect of these risk factors. METHODS: Two sets of groups from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) were selected. The fetal-exposure group born in 1959-1961 from 2011 wave (N = 958) and nonexposure group born in 1963-1965 from 2015 wave (N = 1540) were selected as Comparison 1...

BACKGROUND: Undernutrition in pregnant women is an unfavorable environmental condition that can affect the intrauterine development via epigenetic mechanisms and thus have long-lasting detrimental consequences for the mental health of the offspring later in life. One epigenetic mechanism that has been associated with mental disorders and undernutrition is alterations in DNA methylation. The effect of prenatal undernutrition on the mental health of adult offspring can be analyzed through quasi-experimental studies such as famine studies...

We investigate the effect of early exposure to malnutrition on the cognitive abilities of the offspring of survivors in the context of a natural experiment; i.e., the Great Chinese Famine (GCF) of 1959-61. We employ a novel dataset - the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) - to do so. The paper finds that the cognitive abilities of children whose fathers were born in rural areas during the famine years (1959-1961) were impaired by exposure to the GCF and the negative effect was greater for girls than boys, whereas children whose mothers were born in rural areas during the famine years were not affected...

Child undernutrition and later-life non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are major global health issues. Literature suggests that undernutrition/famine exposure in childhood has immediate and long-term adverse health consequences. However, many studies have theoretical and methodological limitations. To add to the literature and overcome some of these limitations, we adopted a life course perspective and used more robust methods. We investigated the association between exposure to the 1959-1961 Chinese famine and later-life NCDs and if this association depends on: life stage at exposure, famine severity, and sex...

Much of the increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity has been in developing countries with a history of famines and malnutrition. This paper is the first to examine overweight among adult grandsons of grandfathers exposed to starvation during developmental ages. I study grandsons born to grandfathers who served in the Union Army during the US Civil War (1861-5) where some grandfathers experienced severe net malnutrition because they suffered a harsh POW experience. I find that male-line but not female-line grandsons of grandfathers who survived a severe captivity during their growing years faced a 21% increase in mean overweight and a 2% increase in mean BMI compared to grandsons of non-POWs...

Undernutrition in early life associates with increased risk for type 2 diabetes in later life. Whether similar associations hold for other diseases remains unclear. We aim to quantify how perinatal exposure to famines relates to the risk of becoming incident with type 2 diabetes in later life. Using population-wide medical claims data for Austrians aged >50y, yearly diabetes incidence was measured in an epidemiological progression model. We find incidence rates that increase from 2013 to 2017 and observe two famine-related birth cohorts of 5,887 patients with incidence rate increases for diabetes of up to 78% for males and 59% for females compared to cohorts born two years earlier...

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: This study examined the relationship between famine exposure in early life and the risk of type 2 diabetes in adulthood during the 1959-1961 Chinese Famine. SUBJECTS/METHODS: A total of 3,418 individuals aged 35-74 years free of diabetes from two studies in 2006 and 2009 were followed up prospectively in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Famine exposure was classified as unexposed (individuals born in 1962-1978), fetal exposed (individuals born in 1959-1961), child exposed (individuals born in 1949-1958), and adolescent/adult exposed (born in 1931-1948)...

OBJECTIVES: Emerging evidences have explored the association between famine exposure during early life and cancer risk in adulthood, but the results remain controversial and inconsistent. This study aimed to provide a comprehensive evidence on the relation of famine exposure to later cancer risk. DESIGN: Systematic review and meta-analysis. METHODS: Relevant reports published up to March, 2022 were identified by searching PubMed, Embase, Web of sciences and Medline databases...

DNA methylation is the most commonly studied epigenetic mark in humans, as it is well recognised as a stable, heritable mark that can affect genome function and influence gene expression. Somatic DNA methylation patterns that can persist throughout life are established shortly after fertilisation when the majority of epigenetic marks, including DNA methylation, are erased from the pre-implantation embryo. Therefore, the period around conception is potentially critical for influencing DNA methylation, including methylation at imprinted alleles and metastable epialleles (MEs), loci where methylation varies between individuals but is correlated across tissues...

People commonly face adverse circumstances throughout life, which increases risk for psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety, depression, psychosis, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Adversities may occur during different periods in life. Especially adversity during early periods has been suggested to put individuals at risk for adverse mental health outcomes. Here, we investigated whether timing of adversity during the prenatal period, childhood, or mid-to-late adulthood differentially impacted classification into late adulthood symptom profiles...

Famine exposure during early life development can affect disease risk in late-life period, yet, transmission of phenotypic features from famine-exposed individuals to the next generations has not been well characterized. The purpose of our case-control study was to investigate the association of parental starvation in the perinatal period and the period of early childhood with the phenotypic features observed in two generations of descendants of Leningrad siege survivors. We examined 54 children and 30 grandchildren of 58 besieged Leningrad residents who suffered from starvation in early childhood and prenatal age during the Second World War...

The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease theory suggests that early-life malnutrition is associated with an increased risk of chronic disease in adulthood. In this study, we aimed to analyze the association between exposure to the Chinese famine during fetal, childhood, and adolescence, while also exploring potential gender disparities in this association. From August 2018 to 2022 December, a 3-stage stratified random sampling method was employed to recruit 6916 eligible participants in Chongqing for this study...

BACKGROUND: Relationships between adulthood modifiable risk factors and chronic kidney disease (CKD) are well-established, but associations with childhood risk factors are unclear. This study systematically assesses the published evidence about childhood modifiable risk factors and adulthood CKD. METHODS: We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Web of Science to 6th May 2022. Articles were included if (1) they were population-based longitudinal studies, (2) exposures were potentially modifiable, for example through pharmacological or lifestyle modifications, including clinical conditions/measures (diabetes, blood pressure, adiposity, and dyslipidaemia); health behaviours (smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, fitness, and poor nutrition); and socio-economic factors (socio-economic position), and occurred during childhood (ages 2-19 years), and (3) outcome was CKD or surrogate markers of CKD in adulthood (ages 20 years or older)...

Background: Exposure to adversity in utero is thought to increase susceptibility to develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following later life trauma, due to neurobiological programming effects during critical developmental periods. It remains unknown whether effects of prenatal adversity on PTSD susceptibility are modulated by genetic variations in neurobiological pathways implicated in PTSD susceptibility. Objective: We investigated whether genetic variation in the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) modulated effects of prenatal famine exposure on late adulthood PTSD symptom severity after trauma exposure in childhood and mid-to-late adulthood...

BACKGROUND: The Great Chinese Famine, as the famine of 1959-1961 was often known. Famine exposure during early life was proven to be associated with some kidney diseases but has not been studied with kidney stone. We aimed to investigate the relationship between exposure to the Great Chinese Famine in early life and the incidence of kidney stone in adulthood. METHODS: From 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2018, a total of 19,658 eligible adults were recruited in a cross-sectional survey who were born between 1 October 1952 and 30 September 1964 in Guangdong, China...

HPV, or Human Papilloma Virus, has been the primary causative agent of genital warts and cervical cancer worldwide. It is a sexually transmitted infection mainly affecting women of reproductive age group, also infecting men and high-risk group individuals globally, resulting in high mortality. In recent years, HPV has also been found to be the major culprit behind anogenital cancers in both gender and oropharyngeal and colorectal cancers. Few studies have reported the incidence of HPV in breast cancers as well...

Prior research on early-life exposures to famine has established in utero development as a critical period of vulnerability to malnutrition. Yet, previous research tends to focus narrowly on this stage, at the expense of a more comprehensive examination of childhood. As a result, the literature has yet to compare the severity of the consequences of exposure to malnutrition across developmentally salient periods. Such comparison is crucial not only in the magnitude of effects but also in the nature of outcomes...

Historical and demographical human cohorts of populations exposed to famine, as well as animal studies, revealed that exposure to food deprivation is associated to lasting health-related effects for the exposed individuals, as well as transgenerational effects in their offspring that affect their diseases' risk and overall longevity. Autophagy, an evolutionary conserved catabolic process, serves as cellular response to cope with nutrient starvation, allowing the mobilization of an internal source of stored nutrients and the production of energy...