TY  -  JOUR
AU  -  Minucci, Daria
T1  -  Lifelong gender health programming in fetal life
PY  -  2018
Y1  -  2018-07-01
DO  -  10.1723/3035.30352
JO  -  The Italian Journal of Gender-Specific Medicine
JA  -  Ital J Gender-Specific Med
VL  -  4
IS  -  3
SP  -  91
EP  -  100
PB  -  Il Pensiero Scientifico Editore
SN  -  2612-3487
Y2  -  2026/04/30
UR  -  http://dx.doi.org/10.1723/3035.30352
N2  -  Summary. The period from conception to two years of age, and particularly the pregnancy, is crucial for the health of all life. Since lifespan as epidemiology and physiopathology of many common diseases appear different between the sexes, it is very important to know the sex differential contribution to the “developmental origin of health and diseases” during fetal life and also to find more appropriate prevention and diagnostic-therapeutic strategies. Fetal development has growing, metabolic, behavioral sex-specific trajectories and occurs in the mother-placental-fetal system where the fetus and placenta are semiallografts to the mother. The internal and external environmental stimuli are necessary to healthy fetal development and to its adaptive capacities, but if excessive may affect fetal survival chances and increase the lifelong risk and susceptibility to cardiovascular, endocrino-metabolic, immunologic, neurologic diseases in a sex specific way. The main biological systems that mediate adaptation to stress are the maternal-placental-fetal neuroendocrine and immune systems, which act according to gender. A more complete knowledge of the adaptation mechanisms, how they act and are integrated with one other might be a mine of preventive and diagnostic-therapeutic instruments.
ER  -