Chronic stress linked to cerebral palsy

PARIS, July 12 (UPI) -- Chronic mild stress in pregnant mothers may increase the risk that their offspring will develop cerebral palsy, according to a French study in mice.

Dr. Pierre Gressens, of France's Institut national de la sante et de la recherche medicale, used a mouse model to test whether exposure to minimal but repeated stress throughout gestation would make the offspring more vulnerable to brain lesions similar to those observed in children with cerebral palsy.

In the study, the scientists adjusted the normal cycle of light and dark that the pregnant mice were accustomed to for half of the mice, subjecting them to a mild level of stress. Then the researchers exposed the brains of the developing fetuses to injury.

When the brains of the young mice were examined on birth, Gressens and his team found that the offspring born from stressed mothers showed brain lesions about twice as big as those in offspring of unstressed mothers, according to the study published in The Journal of Neuroscience.