Stress in infancy can affect organs

LONDON: Suffering from emotional stress during infancy can cause significant and far-reaching effects on the organs of the body, leading to diseases later in life.
Psychological stress in infancy dramatically changes the amount of an important class of proteins, called GABAA receptors, which in turn may alter the workings of the heart, lungs, kidneys and bladder, researchers said.It was already known that changes in the amounts of GABAA receptors causes some brain disorders, but researchers at the University of Portsmouth in the UK are the first to show that stress can also alter their expression in other organs.
Researchers studied the way GABAA receptors behave in secondary organs in mice which had first been exposed to stress.
The study, published in ‘Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience’, provides hope that drugs targeting these receptors can now be developed to treat conditions such as hypertension, asthma, diabetes and inflammatory bowel diseases.