Some psychosomatic aspects of casualty in reproduction

Recreational Drug Use: A Major Risk Factor for Gastroschisis?

“…There may also be a differential reporting, leading to information bias between responders and non-responders (Embree and Whitehead, 1993) especially when comparing the mothers of malformed and normal infants (Stott, 1958), (Lieff et al 1999a), (Swan et al 1992), (Werler et al 1989). Efforts were made in this CBDMP study (Torfs et al 1994) to account for some of these problems, including the collection of information about father's recreational drug use as it was felt that women were more likely to be truthful about their partner's use than their own, but no direct method of validation of interviewed data was carried out.…”

Endocrine activation mimics the adverse effects of prenatal stress on the neuromotor development of the infant primate

“…culties in their offspring and attributed these problems to "the development prenatally of an irritable and hyperactive autonomic nervous system" (Sontag, 1941(Sontag, , p. 1001. During the next 4 decades, numerous studies documented a wide range of prenatal stress-induced effects on the developing fetus and infant (Field, Sandberg, Quetel, Garcia, & Rosario, 1985;Nuckolls, Cassel, & Kaplan, 1972;Ottinger & Simmons, 1964;Stott, 1959;Ward, 1972; Williamson, LeFevre, & Hector, 1989). In studies with rodents, stress during pregnancy was reported to result in low birth weight and early motor retardation (Fride & Weinstock, 1984), deficits in discrimination learning (Grimm & Frieder, 1987), feminization of the male fetus (Ward, 1972), and increased anxiety under conditions of novelty (Fride, Dan, Gavish, & Weinstock, 1985).…”

Psychiatry: The Epidemiology of Mental Subnormality

“…They do not seem justified in discounting the fact that the mothers in the high stress group are significantly older, have poorer diets, lower incomes and more crowding in the homes, suffer more ill health and have more babies. Stott's reports (33,34) that mothers of mongols have more emotional shock in early pregnancy than mothers of nonmongoloid defectives, and both have more than a control group, are good examples of the biased informa tion that can be obtained from retrospective interviewing of parents; such parents are interested in searching backwards for possible causes for their child's condition. Emotional shock in the first trimester cannot conceivably be responsible for the chromosomal abnormality in mongolism.…”