Women who are dieting in the early stages of pregnancy may put their babies at risk, researchers warned last night.
Inadequate nutrition can affect "hundreds of genes" operating at cellular and molecular level, researchers said yesterday.
Many of the genes play a key role in the growth and development of cells, according to Dr Laura Cox, of the University of Texas, San Antonio, USA, who worked with researchers at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, on the project, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
She said: "Our collaboration allowed us to determine that the nutritional environment impacts the foetal brain at both the cellular and molecular levels."
Fellow researcher Dr Thomas McDonald said: "This study is a further demonstration of the importance of good maternal health and diet.
"It supports the view that poor diets in pregnancy can alter development of foetal organs, in this case the brain, in ways that will have lifetime effects on offspring, potentially lowering IQ and predisposing to behavioural problems."
The researchers say their laboratory study, which involved the use of animals, highlights some of the known risks of pregnancy, which may be partly caused by nutrition problems.
This included teenage pregnancy, when the mother is still growing as well as the baby, and pregnancy later in life when the blood supply to the baby in the womb may be reduced, they said.
* UK guidelines for pregnant women say they should avoid "eating for two".
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences January 17 2010
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