Hormones in baby fingernails to show stress in the womb

When mothers were exposed to severe stress during pregnancy, this can be detected by fetal stress hormones in the fingernails of infants. This is a study that researchers at the University of Basel with colleagues from France in the journal "Biological Psychology" have published.

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May affect that stress during pregnancy, fetal development is well known. But how maternal stress affects really affect the fetal stress response? Blood tests on unborn children or amniocentesis, which can answer these questions require an invasive procedure and are therefore difficult to perform.


A research group led by Dr. Gunther and Dr. Marion Meinlschmidt Tegethoff at the Department of Psychology at the University of Basel has now developed a method such as the fetal stress physiology can be detected without pinholes.

Together with colleagues at the University of Strasbourg, the researchers, the concentration of stress hormones in babies' fingernails are measured. The fingernails begin in the 8th To grow week of pregnancy, and previous studies indicate that stress hormones can accumulate in such a horny substances.

The researchers found that the fingernails of infants whose mothers during pregnancy, high levels of stress were exposed to a higher concentration of the major fetal stress hormone dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) than the fingernails of infants ungestresster mothers.


It is still unclear whether the stress-related increased DHEA levels adversely affect the short or long term health of the children involved. Another possibility would be that it protects the fetus from the negative consequences of stress. The findings help, the researchers, in order to deepen the knowledge of the phenomenon of stress during pregnancy and the resulting fetal stress processes, and give clues for further research. Above all, these findings show for the first time out that is the analysis of fetal stress hormones in the finger nail, a new, noninvasive method for detecting retrospectively physiological stress processes in the fetus objectively.

Original Post
Tegethoff Marion, Jean-Sébastien Raul, Carole Jamey, Mehdi Ben Khelil, Bertrand Ludes, and Gunther Meinlschmidt
Dehydroepiandrosterone in the nails of infants: A potential biomarker of maternal responses to intrauterine stress
Biological Psychology Article in Press | doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.05.007

For more information

• Dr. Marion Tegethoff, University of Basel, Faculty of Psychology, Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, Tel: +41 (0) 61 267 02 61, E-mail: @ unibas.ch marion.tegethoff

• Dr. Gunther Meinlschmidt, University of Basel, Faculty of Psychology, Department of Clinical Psychology and Epidemiology, Tel: +41 (0) 61 267 02 75, E-mail: @ unibas.ch gunther.meinlschmidt

Reto Caluori | Source: EurekAlert
For more information: www.unibas.ch
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