Study shows metabolic effects of famine on future generations

PROVIDENCE, R.I., Dec. 12 (UPI) -- The famine that impacted China from 1959 to 1961 has had a lasting effect on future generations, according to a new study.

Researchers from Brown University and Harbin Medical University in China have found a correlation between prenatal exposure to the famine and increased rates of hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar, and type 2 diabetes in people born during and in the immediate aftermath of the famine.

The study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that people who were in utero during the famine had a significantly higher chance of developing hyperglycemia and type 2 diabetes.

Researchers also found that children conceived long after the famine had passed were also at an increased risk of hyperglycemia.

Researchers studied 3,000 local residents and their children. Some participants were gestated during and others after the famine, including offspring from one, two or no parents with famine exposure.

"These were unique 'experiments,' so to speak, that were unfortunately done to those populations at a time when the society was under revolutionary, social and political upheavals," Dr. Simin Liu, co-corresponding author of the study and a professor of epidemiology and medicine at Brown, said in a press release.

"By studying these families we could determine multiple-generational exposure to nutritional factors and genetic interactions that occur due to famine."

The findings showed that among 983 people gestated during the famine, 31.2 percent had hyperglycemia and 11.2 percent had type 2 diabetes. Of the 1,085 people gestated after the famine was over, 16.9 percent had hyperglycemia and 5.6 percent had type 2 diabetes.

Those with in utero famine exposure had a 1.93 times higher rate of hyperglycemia and a 1.75 times higher rate of type 2 diabetes.

For second-generation participants, hyperglycemia was present in 5.7 percent of the 332 with no famine-exposed parents, 10 percent of the 251 with famine-exposed fathers, 10.6 percent of 263 with famine-exposed mothers and 11.3 percent of 337 with both parents exposed to the famine.

"Genetic, epigenetic reprogramming and subsequent gene-diet interaction are all possible explanations," Liu said in the press release. "By establishing this Chinese famine cohort of families, we hope to conduct a much more comprehensive and in-depth assessment of the whole genome and epigenome along with metabolic biomarkers of these participants moving forward."