Limited access to resources during pregnancy is another form of gestational stress exposure that induces predisposition to later disease states. In 1998, Quebec suffered a severe ice storm that caused roughly five billion dollars’ worth of damage and left individuals with no electricity, limited access to water, and no central heat in below 0° Celsius temperatures for up to six weeks. Offspring of women pregnant during this ice storm exhibited widespread alterations in DNA methylation. Teenage offspring exposed to the Quebec ice storm during gestation exhibited altered methylation status of 2,872 CpG sites spanning 1,564 genes in T-cells collected from blood samples (Cao-Lei et al., 2015). Many of the genes differentially methylated were related to immune and metabolic function. The methylation differences in offspring were mediated by their mother’s cognitive appraisal (i.e. negative versus positive experience) of their experience during the ice storm. In these children, their mother’s objective level of prenatal stress predicted their body mass index (BMI) and adiposity; women who reported greater stress had offspring with a greater BMI and central adiposity. A protective effect of DNA
