The Impact of Maternal Prenatal Stress Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic during the First 1000 Days: A Historical Perspective.

The COVID-19 pandemic has a major impact on society, particularly affecting its vulnerable members, including pregnant women and their unborn children. Pregnant mothers reported fear of infection, fear of vertical transmission, fear of poor birth and child outcomes, social isolation, uncertainty about their partner's presence during medical appointments and delivery, increased domestic abuse, and other collateral damage, including vaccine hesitancy. Accordingly, pregnant women's known vulnerability for mental health problems has become a concern during the COVID-19 pandemic, also because of the known effects of prenatal stress for the unborn child. The current narrative review provides a historical overview of transgenerational effects of exposure to disasters during pregnancy, and the role of maternal prenatal stress. We place these effects into the perspective of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hereby, we aim to draw attention to the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women of reproductive age (15-49 year) and its potential associated short-term and long-term consequences for the health of children who are conceived, carried, and born during this pandemic. Timely detection and intervention during the first 1000 days is essential to reduce the burden of transgenerational effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on research and careers of early career researchers: a DOHaD perspective.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed several inequalities worldwide, including the populations' access to healthcare systems and economic differences that impact the access to vaccination, medical resources, and health care services. Scientific research activities were not an exception, such that scientific research was profoundly impacted globally. Research trainees and early career researchers (ECRs) are the life force of scientific discovery around the world, and their work and progress in research was dramatically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. ECRs are a particularly vulnerable group as they are in a formative stage of their scientific careers, any disruptions during which is going to likely impact their lifelong career trajectory. To understand how COVID-19 impacted lives, career development plans, and research of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) ECRs, the International DOHaD ECR committee formed a special interest group comprising of ECR representatives of International DOHaD affiliated Societies/Chapters from around the world (Australia and New Zealand, Canada, French Speaking DOHaD, Japan, Latin America, Pakistan and USA). The anecdotal evidence summarized in this brief report, provide an overview of the findings of this special interest group, specifically on the impact of the evolving COVID-19 pandemic on daily research activities and its effects on career development plans of ECRs. We also discuss how our learnings from these shared experiences can strengthen collaborative work for the current and future generation of scientists.

Earth Dreams: Reimagining ARPA for Health of People, Places and Planet.

Bold new approaches are urgently needed to overcome global health challenges. The proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is intended to provide rapid health breakthroughs. While new technologies for earlier disease detection and more effective treatment are critical, we urge equal attention be given to the wider (physical, emotional, social, political, and economic) environmental ecosystems driving the non-communicable disease (NCD) crisis in the first place. This requires an integrated, cross-sectoral vision that spans the interwoven connections affecting health across the scales of people, places, and planet. This wider "exposome" perspective considers biopsychosocial factors that promote resilience and reduce vulnerabilities of individuals and communities over time-the many variables driving health disparities. Since life course health is strongly determined by early life environments, early interventions should be prioritized as a matter of effectiveness and social justice. Here, we explore the origins of the Advanced Research Project Agency and point to its potential to build integrated solutions, with wisdom and ethical value systems as a compass. Since the planned ARPA-H is anticipated to spawn international collaborations, the imagined concept is of relevance to a broad audience of researchers. With appropriate input, the quest for health equity through personalized, precision medicine while deconstructing unacceptable structural inequities may be accelerated.

Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, resilience and social justice in the COVID era.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on how health outcomes are unequally distributed among different population groups, with disadvantaged communities and individuals being disproportionality affected in terms of infection, morbidity and mortality, as well as vaccine access. Recently, there has been considerable debate about how social disadvantage and inequality intersect with developmental processes to result in a heightened susceptibility to environmental stressors, economic shocks and large-scale health emergencies. We argue that DOHaD Society members can make important contributions to addressing issues of inequality and improving community resilience in response to COVID-19. In order to do so, it is beneficial to engage with and adopt a social justice framework. We detail how DOHaD can align its research and policy recommendations with a social justice perspective to ensure that we contribute to improving the health of present and future generations in an equitable and socially just way.

The human gut microbiome and health inequities.

Individuals who are minoritized as a result of race, sexual identity, gender, or socioeconomic status experience a higher prevalence of many diseases. Understanding the biological processes that cause and maintain these socially driven health inequities is essential for addressing them. The gut microbiome is strongly shaped by host environments and affects host metabolic, immune, and neuroendocrine functions, making it an important pathway by which differences in experiences caused by social, political, and economic forces could contribute to health inequities. Nevertheless, few studies have directly integrated the gut microbiome into investigations of health inequities. Here, we argue that accounting for host-gut microbe interactions will improve understanding and management of health inequities, and that health policy must begin to consider the microbiome as an important pathway linking environments to population health.

COVID-19 and developmental origins of health and disease.

From the moment of the identification of SARS-CoV-2 as an etiological agent of the severe clinical pictures of pneumonia that were being slowly observed all over the world, numerous studies have been conducted to increase the knowledge about what was an unknown virus until then. The efforts were mainly aimed to acquire epidemiological, microbiological, pathogenetic, clinical, diagnostic, therapeutic and preventive information in order to increase the available weapons to fight an infection which was rapidly taking on the characteristics of the pandemic. Given the topicality of the problem, not everything has yet been fully understood and clarified, especially in the maternal-fetal­neonatal field, where we are beginning to question what could be the outcomes of newborn babies born to mothers who contracted SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy. Thus, the aim of this review is to analyze the long-term outcomes of this infection that could affect the offspring, regardless of a possible maternal-fetal transmission, focusing on, above all, the role of maternal immune activation and the expression of the Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) in particular at the placental level.

The Role of Offspring Genotype-By-Sex Interactions, Independently of Environmental Cues, on the Phenotype Traits of an Obese Swine Model.

The present study aimed to assess the importance of offspring genotype on postnatal development, independently of confounding factors related to prenatal environment and postnatal lifestyle, using a translational model of obesity and metabolic syndrome (the Iberian pig). Hence, we compared two genotypes (purebred Iberian and crossbreds Iberian × Large White), produced in one single maternal environment (pure Iberian mothers) through artificial insemination of Iberian sows with Iberian and Large White heterospermic semen and maintained in the same conditions during postnatal development. The results indicate that, under same pre- and postnatal environments, the interaction genotype-by-sex has a determinant role on offspring phenotype (i.e., growth and development, metabolic and antioxidant status and fatty acid composition of different tissues). These results may set the basis for future preclinical and clinical research on the differences in the metabolic phenotype among genotypes.

The path ahead: From global pandemic to health promotion.

The current COVID-19 pandemic represents an acute threat to the health of adults and children across the globe. In addition, it has the potential to worsen the health of future generations through intergenerational health effects. Examples from history, including the Dutch famine (Hongerwinter), suggest that in utero and early life environments may have significant implications for health outcomes throughout the lifespan and are important in determining risk of chronic disease in adulthood. Parental health status, stress, and nutrition appear to affect offspring health and are all affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, it is critical that we consider the potential impacts of the current pandemic on pregnant women, infants and children and take public health and medical actions to mitigate risk and promote health in future generations.