By regulating risk factors that make the pregnancy pathological, fetal programming is affected and
possible diseases in adult life are decreased. The fetus then has the possibility to develop in ‘healthy’
environment provided by ‘the mother’. Let us imagine that the newborn lives in conditions of clean air,
light, food… or is exposed to dark, pollution, bad nutrition. Growth and development are expectedly
better in healthy environment. The same happens with fetus within the uterus.
Fetal programming implies epigenetic changes in fetus as a response to different external (for example
smoking) or internal factors (for example gestative diabetes, hypertension, long-term diabetes, thyroid
disorders, metabolopatias, etc). Epigenetic changes mean that different genes are activated in exposed
fetus in order to adapt to the environment.
