Babies born during famine have more than double the risk of developing schizophrenia later in life, according to a study based on the 1959-1961 famine in China. The findings show that starvation experienced during the critical stages of early gestation alters brain development, producing mental health consequences years later in adulthood, the researchers say.
Schizophrenia occurs worldwide in about 1% of the population. But in individuals who received inadequate fetal nutrition, the risk may be as much as 2.3%, say researchers.
David St Clair at Aberdeen University and colleagues at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, looked at the incidence of schizophrenia among those born before, during and after the 1959-1961 period of extreme famine in the badly affected Chinese province of Anhui.
Although birth rates during the period plummeted by 80%, the death-adjusted risk of schizophrenia for those born in 1960 was 2.3 times higher than for those born before or two years after the famine.
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