Hungry Mothers Have Children Prone to Drug Addiction

Having an addiction problem? Well, this may mean that your mother did not eat well after conceiving you. A new research published in the journal "Addiction" shows that children whose mothers passed through a period of famine are prone to addictions later in life.

The team from the Dutch mental health care organization, Bouman GGZ, and from the Erasmus University Rotterdam made its study on persons born in Rotterdam between 1944 and 1947, during and after the Dutch 'hunger winter'. Individuals whose mothers had experienced severe starvation during their early pregnancy were much more likely to be treated for addictive disorders.

The 'hunger winter' took place from mid-October 1944 until 12 May 1945, when the Germans put the occupied Netherlands under a total embargo as a retaliation for Dutch support for the Allied forces following the failed parachute attack at Arnhem, in September 1944. Food ration dropped severely between February and May 1945, when the daily food consumption was less than 1,000 calories, while the normal daily consume is 2,300 calories for women and 2,900 for men.

Pregnant and nursing mothers should have received supplementary rations, but at the peak of the crisis, the extra rations could no longer be delivered, as the hunger made 2,2000 victims in the western Netherlands.

The 'hunger winter' has been connected with a wide array of chronic conditions amongst adults in later life, from physical ones (like coronary heart disease) to psychiatric ones (like schizophrenia and clinical depression). Recent researches show that if the brain cannot develop at normal rates during the embryo's development in the womb, the resulting neurodevelopmental abnormalities can make the child prone to addiction.

"Exposure to famine beyond the first three months did not result in a higher risk of addiction, which supports the view that the first trimester is crucial in the development of the reward system in the human brain that is involved in addictive behavior. The results point up the adverse influence of maternal malnutrition on the mental health of the adult offspring, and give rise to great concern about the possible future consequences for the hunger regions in our world", said lead author Ernst Franzek.