Developmental origins of health and disease: reducing the burden of chronic disease in the next generation

Abstract

Despite a wealth of underpinning experimental support, there has been considerable resistance to the concept that environmental factors acting early in life (usually in fetal life) have profound effects on vulnerability to disease later in life, often in adulthood. This has resulted in an unwillingness among public health decision makers to implement relatively simple approaches, based upon an understanding of developmental plasticity and intergenerational influences, to reducing the burden of disease particularly in low socioeconomic groups.