Babies born during the brief but intense Biafra famine in Nigeria 40 years ago have grown up to be more susceptible to obesity and its attendant maladies than those born on either side of it, scientists have found.
The researchers, from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital in Enugu, said the finding added evidence to the argument that malnutrition in the womb causes greater susceptibility to such problems in later life.
Their study was published online last week by PLoS One.
Recruiting in marketplaces, the researchers tested 1,339 adults in three groups: those gestated before, during and after the famine, which lasted from late 1968 to early 1970. The adults born in the famine weighed about five pounds more, and had slightly higher blood pressure and blood glucose.
The researchers acknowledged that they did not recruit as many subjects as they originally hoped for, nor could they control for factors like whether poorer, smaller mothers died in the war, or how surviving mothers treated their children.
Biafra, the homeland of the Ibo tribe, tried to secede from Nigeria in 1967, in a dispute with other tribes and the military-led government over language, religion and oil reserves. The Nigerian Army, buoyed by support from Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States, surrounded Biafra and cut off all food; one million civilians may have died in the ensuing famine, which became a cause célèbre in the West, especially for John Lennon of Beatles fame.