Children who lost fathers in First World War also died younger

Children who lost their fathers or whose fatheres were seriously wounded in the First World War died a year younger than their counterparts on average, new research shows.

The life expectancy of those who became fatherless while still in the womb was reduced by more than two years, according to the research.

The link is still being investigated, but experts believe that it is down to the impact of psychological stress on the mothers and their children.

According to some experts, our susceptibility to disease in adulthood may be linked to what happens to us in early life.

The French study was designed to investigate the impact of "early negative adversities" (ELAs) on children born during the First World War.

Researchers from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research identified more than 4,000 children born during the war whose fathers had either been killed or severely wounded in the trenches.

Each child was matched with a "control" child who was born at the same time in the same area but did not lose their father during the war.

Compared with these control subjects, the children whose fathers had been severely hurt or killed during the war lost on average one year of life expectancy.

The effect was more pronounced in those children whose fathers died while their mother was pregnant - their lives were shortened by 2.2 years.

Lead researcher Nicolas Todd said: "The next step in the study will be to determine the cause of death for those having suffered ELA. This will shed light on the mechanisms involved.

"We know that deregulation of the stress response is commonly found on animal models of ELAs, so it will be interesting to see if any evidence of this can be seen in the causes of death in the French cohort.

"It may give us further insight into the long-term effects of ELA."