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National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 39(107), p. 16881-16886, 2010

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1009459107

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Prenatal undernutrition and cognitive function in late adulthood

Journal article published in 2010 by Susanne R. de Rooij ORCID, Hans Wouters, Julie E. Yonker, Rebecca C. Painter, Tessa J. Roseboom ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

At the end of World War II, a severe 5-mo famine struck the cities in the western part of The Netherlands. At its peak, the rations dropped to as low as 400 calories per day. In 1972, cognitive performance in 19-y-old male conscripts was reported not to have been affected by exposure to the famine before birth. In the present study, we show that cognitive function in later life does seem affected by prenatal undernutrition. We found that at age 56 to 59, men and women exposed to famine during the early stage of gestation performed worse on a selective attention task, a cognitive ability that usually declines with increasing age. We hypothesize that this decline may be an early manifestation of an accelerated cognitive aging process.