Origins of fetal handedness

Fetal origins of obesity.

The worldwide epidemic of obesity continues unabated. Obesity is notoriously difficult to treat, and, thus, prevention is critical. A new paradigm for prevention, which evolved from the notion that environmental factors in utero may influence lifelong health, has emerged in recent years. A large number of epidemiological studies have demonstrated a direct relationship between birth weight and B...

Fetal origins of adult disease

Several decades of research have demonstrated that significant contributions to risk of cardiovascular disease are made by adult lifestyle factors such as smoking, high consumption of saturated fats and salt, low levels of physical activity, and obesity. The more recent assertion that the risk of hypertension and coronary heart disease in adult life may be determined by an adverse environment b...

Fetal Origins and Parental Responses;

Fetal origins of coronary heart disease.

The fetal origins hypothesis states that fetal undernutrition in middle to late gestation, which leads to disproportionate fetal growth, programmes later coronary heart disease. Animal studies have shown that undernutrition before birth programmes persisting changes in a range of metabolic, physiological, and structural parameters. Studies in humans have shown that men and women whose birth wei...

Fetal and infant origins of cardiovascular disease.

Coronary heart disease and stroke are the commonest causes of illness and death for people living in the UK. We urgently need a better understanding of their aetiology. Recent research at the Medical Research Council's Environmental Epidemiology Unit is showing that impaired growth in fetal life and infancy have profound long-term consequences for health in adulthood. Improving maternal and inf...