ReviewAnnual review of public health2011
Prenatal famine and adult health.
Review in Annual review of public health, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 174 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
174 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Association between early exposure to famine and risk of renal impairment in adulthood: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Nutrition & diabetes · 2024Pooled it
- Famine Exposure during Early Life and Risk of Cancer in Adulthood: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.The journal of nutrition, health & aging · 2023Pooled it
- Early-Life Exposure to the Chinese Famine of 1959-1961 and Type 2 Diabetes in Adulthood: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Nutrients · 2022Pooled it
- Epidemiology of floods in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review of health outcomes.BMC public health · 2022Pooled it
- Maternal and fetal genetic effects on birth weight and their relevance to cardio-metabolic risk factors.Nature genetics · 2019Pooled it
- Exposure to improved nutrition from conception to age 2 years and adult cardiometabolic disease risk: a modelling study.The Lancet. Global health · 2018Trial
- An experimental test of the fetal programming hypothesis: Can we reduce child ontogenetic vulnerability to psychopathology by decreasing maternal depression?Development and psychopathology · 2018Trial
- Enhanced Metabolic Risks in Patients with Obesity and Nutritional Deficiencies in the U.S.: A TriNetX Study.Nutrients · 2026Article
- Maternal fasting during early gestation induces epigenetic alterations and schizophrenia-related phenotypes.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Early life sugar rationing and ageing related diseases, biological ageing and mortality.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Acute maternal stress in pregnancy and cardiovascular risk factors in adolescent offspring: a birth-cohort study.International journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Early-life nutritional environment is associated with late-life cognition in the Health and Retirement Study, a pellagra epidemic natural experiment.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Undernutrition-related diabetes in mice is linked to early undernutrition.American journal of physiology. Endocrinology and metabolism · 2026Article
- Moderate maternal nutrient restriction alters type II alveolar epithelial cell density in the non-human primate fetal lung.Experimental physiology · 2026Article
- Prenatal and postnatal droughts interact in shaping cognitive development.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Association of famine exposure in early life with the risk of mortality in later life among Chinese population: a prospective cohort study.Journal of health, population, and nutrition · 2026Article
- Prenatal famine exposure restricts genetic effects on birth weight with implications for metabolic disease risk.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Childhood famine exposure and the risk of gastrointestinal diseases in old individuals: a retrospective cohort analysis using the CHARLS database.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Epigenetic age and cardiometabolic disease in Guatemalan adults: a cross-sectional analysis.Journal of health, population, and nutrition · 2026Article
- Reduced oxygen tension during embryo culture and neonatal growth outcomes: a large retrospective cohort study of 13,831 fresh IVF/ICSI singleton births.Journal of assisted reproduction and genetics · 2026Article
114 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
We review human studies on the relation between acute exposures to prenatal famine and adult physical and mental health. These studies are observational and include exposures to a famine environment by natural or man-made causes or, more commonly, from the interplay between natural and human factors. These natural experiments provide an opportunity to examine long-term outcomes after famine exposures by comparing exposed and nonexposed individuals. The studies show consistent associations between prenatal famine and adult body size, diabetes, and schizophrenia. For other measures of adult health, findings are less robust. A relation between prenatal famine and some reported epigenetic changes may provide a potential mechanism to explain specific associations. Much progress can be made if current separate studies are further analyzed with comparable definitions of exposures and outcomes and using common analytic strategies.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.