Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 107, Issue 39, Pages 16881-16886Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1009459107
Keywords
developmental origins; fetal; nutrition; cognition; aging
Categories
Funding
- Netherlands Heart Foundation [2001B087, 2003B165, 2007B083]
- Academic Medical Centre (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
- Medical Research Council (United Kingdom)
- European Science Foundation/The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research
Ask authors/readers for more resources
the end of World War II, a severe 5-mo famine struck the cities in the western part of The Netherlands. At its peak, the rations dropped to as low as 400 calories per day. In 1972, cognitive performance in 19-y-old male conscripts was reported not to have been affected by exposure to the famine before birth. In the present study, we show that cognitive function in later life does seem affected by prenatal undernutrition. We found that at age 56 to 59, men and women exposed to famine during the early stage of gestation performed worse on a selective attention task, a cognitive ability that usually declines with increasing age. We hypothesize that this decline may be an early manifestation of an accelerated cognitive aging process.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available