Early life cold and heat exposure impacts white matter development in children

Laura Granés, Esmée Essers, Joan Ballester, Sami Petricola, Henning Tiemeier, Carmen Iñiguez, Carles Soriano-Mas and Mònica Guxens ()
Additional contact information
Laura Granés: Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute-IDIBELL
Esmée Essers: ISGlobal
Joan Ballester: ISGlobal
Sami Petricola: ISGlobal
Henning Tiemeier: University Medical Centre
Carmen Iñiguez: Carlos III Health Institute
Carles Soriano-Mas: Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute-IDIBELL
Mònica Guxens: ISGlobal

Nature Climate Change, 2024, vol. 14, issue 7, 760-766

Abstract: Abstract Prenatal life and childhood represent periods that are vulnerable to environmental exposures. Both cold and heat may have negative impacts on children’s mental health and cognition, but the underlying neural mechanisms are unknown. Here, by a magnetic resonance imaging assessment of 2,681 children from the Netherlands Generation R birth cohort, we show that heat exposure during infancy and toddlerhood as well as cold exposure during pregnancy and infancy are associated with higher mean diffusivity at preadolescence, indicative of reduced myelination and maturation of white matter microstructure. No associations for fractional anisotropy were observed. Children living in poorer neighbourhoods were more vulnerable to cold and heat exposure. Our findings suggest that cold and heat exposure in periods of rapid brain development may have lasting impacts on children’s white matter microstructure, a risk that must be considered in the context of ongoing climate change.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-02027-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:14:y:2024:i:7:d:10.1038_s41558-024-02027-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-024-02027-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().