1 Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Academic Medical Centre at the University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2 Department of Radiology, Academic Medical Centre at the University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Brain. 2016 Aug;139(Pt 8):2136-42. doi: 10.1093/brain/aww132. Epub 2016 Jul 8.
Early nutritional deprivation might cause irreversible damage to the brain. Prenatal exposure to undernutrition has been shown to be associated with increased central nervous system anomalies at birth and decreased cognitive function in adulthood. Little is known about the potential effect on the brain in older age. We investigated brain size and structure at age 68 years after prenatal famine exposure. T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance images of the brain were made in 118 Dutch famine birth cohort members. Of these 118 (44% male, age range 65-69 years), 41 had been exposed to famine in early gestation and 77 had been prenatally unexposed. Structural volumes were automatically assessed using FreeSurfer. Diffusion tensor imaging was performed and anisotropy and diffusivity were computed. Fluid attenuated inversion recovery was performed to assess white matter hyperintensities. Exposure to famine in early gestation was associated with smaller intracranial volume in males, but not females. Volumes of total brain, grey and white matter were also smaller in early exposed males, but these differences disappeared after adjusting for intracranial volume. Prenatally exposed males but not females, had a smaller intracranial and total brain volume compared to unexposed subjects. Our findings show that prenatal undernutrition permanently affected brain size.media-1vid110.1093/brain/aww132_video_abstractaww132_video_abstract.
早期营养不良可能对大脑造成不可逆转的损害。产前营养不良暴露已被证明与出生时中枢神经系统异常增加和成年后认知功能下降有关。关于其对老年大脑的潜在影响知之甚少。我们研究了产前饥荒暴露后 68 岁时的大脑大小和结构。对 118 名荷兰饥荒出生队列成员的大脑进行了 T1 加权结构磁共振成像。在这 118 名参与者中（44%为男性，年龄在 65-69 岁之间），有 41 名在妊娠早期经历了饥荒，77 名在孕期没有暴露于饥荒。使用 FreeSurfer 自动评估结构体积。进行弥散张量成像并计算各向异性和弥散度。进行液体衰减反转恢复以评估白质高信号。妊娠早期暴露于饥荒与男性而不是女性的颅内体积较小有关。早期暴露的男性大脑的总脑、灰质和白质体积也较小，但在调整颅内体积后这些差异消失。与未暴露组相比，产前暴露的男性但不是女性的颅内和总脑体积较小。我们的研究结果表明，产前营养不良会永久性地影响大脑大小。
