Atkins effect on pregnancy under scrutiny

Published on Tuesday 12 April 2005 01:14

SCIENTISTS have launched a study to see if eating an Atkins-style diet when pregnant stresses the unborn child and makes it more prone to diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure in later life.

The research, by Edinburgh and Southampton universities, will test a group of 100 people born in Motherwell in the late 1960s whose mothers were advised to eat a diet high in protein and low in carbohydrate - similar to the now popular Atkins diet.

Earlier work found that the mothers with less balanced diets had babies who grew up to have higher blood pressure and altered blood sugar levels.

It is thought this is because the babies became stressed in the womb as their mothers produced hormones associated with the "fight or flight response". Scientists believe this may have "programmed" the babies to carry on producing more of the hormones in adult life, putting them at increased risk of diabetes and high blood pressure.

Dr Rebecca Reynolds, a senior lecturer in diabetes and hormones at Edinburgh University, said: "We are inviting people to come in for stress tests - like mental arithmetic and public speaking - and we’re going to measure their stress hormone level while they are doing the test. That will show whether there’s a possible link and that high stress levels do cause this.

"If the mother ate an unbalanced diet in pregnancy, that might have caused stress to the growing, developing baby.

"If a baby is programmed in early life, that subsequently affects the way they respond in their later life."

Dr Reynolds said it was anticipated that the stress responses of those whose mothers ate Atkins-type diets during pregnancy would be greater than those who ate more balanced diets.

Dr Keith Godfrey, of the University of Southampton’s School of Medicine, said he hoped the findings would encourage people to modify their eating habits.

He added: "During pregnancy, the developing baby is wholly dependent upon the mother for an adequate and appropriate supply of nutrients.

"Many young women today eat unbalanced diets, such as the Atkins diet. This is an important part of research to determine how best to improve a mother’s nutrition during pregnancy, which could have lifelong benefits for the health of the baby."