Scientists - Caesarean section inhibits infant brain development

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Biologists have found that a cesarean section has an unusual effect on the formation and growth of the brains of mice after their birth, contributing to the mass death of neurons. This is the conclusion reached by biologists who published an article in the journal PNAS.

"Many doctors today associate caesarean section with sleep disturbances and emotional development of the child, as well as the formation of attention deficit disorder. Our observations have revealed a possible reason why this happens," wrote Nancy Forger and her colleagues at the university. Georgia in Atlanta (USA).

In recent years, scientists have become actively interested in how various "inventions of civilization" associated with procreation and raising children affect the development of a child. These studies have already shown that many of these practices do not always have a positive effect on the development of infants and toddlers.

For example, recent studies show that breast milk and the act of feeding itself has a lot of benefits for children - it improves the functioning of the immune system and normalizes the intestinal microflora of babies, increases their IQ in the future and makes them more adapted to life. All this is deprived of babies fed with dry formula.

Forger and her colleagues have uncovered the negative traits of another popular "fruit of civilization", caesarean section, investigating popular stories in medical circles today that this medical procedure causes delays in brain development and a host of other problems in the baby after birth.

To test such claims, scientists conducted a series of experiments on pregnant mice and their offspring, some of which were born in a normal way, and the rest survived the mouse analogue of cesarean section.

Her team, according to Forger, was interested in two things - the rate of death of "extra" nerve cells after the birth of the fetus and how the work of the "infection center" in the hypothalamus changed in response to mass death of neurons and the first contact with microbes and viruses.

As scientists emphasize, the death of neurons immediately after the baby is born and excessive activation of the hypothalamus at the same time are quite normal phenomena for the first hours of a newborn's life. This is how the body learns to fight infections and forms the primary chains of nerve cells, getting rid of unnecessary bodies.

This process is disrupted by surgical intervention in the process of childbirth. In this case, as shown by observations of mice, neurons continued to die in some regions of the brains of newborn rodents for another three days, and their immunity could not "settle down" for quite a long time.

Such disorders significantly affected the life and behavior of the mice - the nature of their ultrasonic "crying" changed dramatically, and they began to gain weight faster than their counterparts, who were born in a normal way. Something similar, as the researchers note, is observed among newborn babies.

Today, according to Forger, about 30% of babies in the United States are born with a caesarean section, and in many cases this procedure was driven not by necessity, but by the wishes of the parents themselves. The results of the experiments make one think about how acceptable it is from a medical point of view, scientists conclude.