Can excess glucocorticoid, in utero, predispose to cardiovascular and metabolic disease in middle age?

For many years, both human and animal studies correlated changes in behavio ur of the young offspring with the degree of maternal stress or glucocortic oid exposure of the foetus/neonate. In the past ten years there has been ov erwhelming epidemiological evidence to suggest that growth retardation in u tero is a very important risk factor for the development of cardiovascular and metabolic disease in adult life. More recently, it has been shown that one important, even key, determinant is the exposure of the foetus to exces s glucocorticoid. Even a brief period (48 h) of dexamethasone exposure very early in pregnancy was able to programme permanently hypertensive adult sh eep. Understanding how such programming works, and the underlying physiolog ical changes that occur provides one of the most exciting challenges in con temporary endocrinology and developmental biology.