Persistent epigenetic differences associated with prenatal exposure to famine in humans

By B. Heijmans, E. Tobi, A. Stein, Hein Putter, G. Blauw, E. Susser, P. Slagboom, L. Lumey. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008

3,009 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Genetics, Molecular Biology, Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/610f86d88df51fb7e1c52bce1b754fe21cbde915

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Citations in the corpus

Low-grade inflammation, diet composition and health: current research evidence and its translation (2015, neutral): “In humans, this was most clearly demonstrated in the Second World War, when Dutch women were placed under famine conditions following a railway workers’ strike (the Dutch Hunger Winter) (102,103) .”
Epigenetic gene promoter methylation at birth is associated with child’s later adiposity (2011, background): “In vitro fertilization increases risk of imprinting disorders (44), and methylation effects on imprinted genes have been reported in offspring of mothers exposed to famine during various periods of pregnancy (45,46), but with no associations with phenotype reported.”
DNA methylation differences after exposure to prenatal famine are common and timing- and sex-specific. (2009, methodology): “Indeed, animal studies and our early human data on the imprinted IGF2 locus indicated a link between prenatal nutritional and DNA methylation.”
Paternally-induced transgenerational environmental reprogramming of metabolic gene expression in mammals (2010, background): “…two samples (red and green dots in Figures 5A and 5B), consistent withmany observations indicating that environmental changes tend to have small quantitative effects on cytosine methylation in the next generation (Blewitt et al., 2006; Heijmans et al., 2008; Ng et al., 2010; Weaver et al., 2004).”
Child health, developmental plasticity, and epigenetic programming. (2011, background): “(182) recently reported that individuals who were prenatally exposed to Dutch famine have, six decades later, less DNA methylation of the imprinted IGF2 gene compared with their unexposed, same-sex siblings.”
THE DETERMINANTS OF HUMAN CAPITAL FORMATION DURING THE EARLY YEARS OF LIFE: THEORY, MEASUREMENT, AND POLICIES (2015, background): “An impressive study that studied individuals born around the Dutch famine caused by the Nazi embargo in 1944–1945 (see Heijmans et al. 2008) identified epigenetic modifications and, in particular, in the expression of the insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) gene.5 The Dutch famine study identified…”
Epigenetics and the environment: emerging patterns and implications (2012, background): “As is discussed below, human studies on the gestational effects of nutrition have thus far identified DNA methylation changes that are relatively smal”
Regulation of animal size by eNPP, Bergmann's rule, and related phenomena (2011, background): “…effects of parental nutrition and health on the growth, health, and reproductive potential of children and even grandchildren (Pembrey et al. 2006, Heijmans et al. 2008, Whitelaw and Whitelaw 2008, Carone et al. 2010), emphasizes how quickly food quality and quantity, as well as other…”
Instrumental Variable Estimation of the Causal Effect of Hunger Early in Life on Health Later in Life (2016, positive): “In a landmark study, Heijmans et al. (2008) show that individuals who were exposed to the famine in the early stages of pregnancy had, 60 years later, less DNA methylation of a certain imprinted gene, compared with their unexposed same-sex siblings.”