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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

Prenatal stress shapes lifelong disease risk through cellular aging and stem cell pathways

Prenatal stress shapes lifelong disease risk via cellular aging and stem cell pathways

The long-term effects of prenatal stress may become biologically embedded through cellular pathways such as the telomere system and stem cell biology.

The talk addresses a question raised by epidemiological, clinical, and preclinical evidence: through which biological mechanisms do conditions in utero shape susceptibility to physical and mental illnesses later in life? The presentation discusses potential molecular pathways in this context, particularly the telomere system. The central argument is that the biological embedding of chronic maternal stress may extend to the characteristics of the infant’s stem cell biology, based on the observation that the long-term effects of stress outlast the lifespan of most differentiated cells and that these cells can be replenished only by stem and progenitor cells. To this end, associations between maternal stress and aging-related cellular outcomes in cells collected at birth are examined, with the aim of identifying the earliest vulnerabilities in cellular health, aging, and age-related disease risk. Finally, the implications of these findings for identifying new cellular targets and molecular mechanisms are discussed in relation to risk stratification, prevention strategies, early diagnosis, and personalized interventions.

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