The effect of mild to moderate maternal undernutrition on intrauterine and subsequent growth and development in man remains largely unknown. Little is known of the physiological and particularly the metabolic aspects of the maternal/fetal relationship under these circumstances. The great difficulty is to construct an experimental situation suitable for investigation in man. In animal the construction of an experiment is simpler and as a result much of our recent knowledge is mainly derived from animal studies. These have shown that maternal nutritional restriction during pregnancy may reduce the size of the offspring and may retard subsequent postnatal growth. Morphological and histochemical alterations of fetal organs have been documented while the rate of cell multiplication in brain is diminished.

, ,
H.K.A. Visser (Henk)
Stichting "De Drie Lichten"
Erasmus University Rotterdam
hdl.handle.net/1765/25894
Erasmus MC: University Medical Center Rotterdam

Boersma, E. R. (1979, October 17). Perinatal circumstances in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania : studies on some physiological aspects in the tropics. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/25894