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Lipid metabolism during the perinatal phase, and its implications on postnatal development
E Herrera1, I López-Soldado, M Limones
1Facultad de Ciencias Experimentales y de la Salud, Universidad San Pablo-CEU, Madrid, Spain. eherrera@ceu.es
Insights
Maternal lipid metabolism during pregnancy impacts offspring development. Undernutrition and altered food intake during lactation have long-term effects on glucose regulation, outweighing dietary fatty acid composition changes.
Area of Science:
- Perinatal nutrition and metabolism
- Developmental programming
- Endocrinology
Background:
- Lipid metabolism is crucial during pregnancy for fetal substrate supply.
- Perinatal nutritional insults can have lasting effects on offspring health.
- Understanding these effects is key to preventing metabolic disorders.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the short- and long-term effects of altered maternal lipid metabolism during the perinatal stage on offspring.
- To determine the impact of maternal fat accumulation, undernutrition, and omega-3 fatty acid intake on offspring development and glucose homeostasis.
- To elucidate the mechanisms behind long-term metabolic consequences, differentiating between dietary composition and food intake effects.
Main Methods:
- Experimental designs in rats to manipulate maternal nutrition during specific perinatal periods (pregnancy, lactation).
- Assessment of intrauterine development, postnatal growth, body weight, and food intake.
- Evaluation of offspring glucose tolerance and glucose/insulin relationships at adult ages (10 and 16 weeks).
- Cross-fostering experiments to distinguish between prenatal and lactational effects.
- Investigation into the roles of decreased food intake versus altered milk composition.
Main Results:
- Impeded maternal fat accumulation in early pregnancy restricted intrauterine growth and impaired adult glucose tolerance.
- Undernutrition during suckling led to decreased body weight with lasting effects, despite normal post-weaning intake.
- A diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids during lactation, not pregnancy, negatively affected offspring glucose/insulin relationships.
- Reduced food intake during lactation, caused by the omega-3 rich diet, was responsible for altered pancreatic glucose responsiveness, not changes in milk fatty acid composition.
Conclusions:
- Maternal fat accumulation during early pregnancy is critical for normal intrauterine development and long-term metabolic health.
- Food intake during the lactation period significantly influences postnatal development and adult glucose/insulin regulation.
- The impact of maternal nutrition on offspring metabolic programming is complex, with factors like food availability playing a more dominant role than specific dietary components like omega-3 fatty acids.
Abstract:
During pregnancy, lipid metabolism plays a major role to warrant the availability of substrates to the foetus. By using different experimental designs in the rat we have been able to answer several questions that were open about the short- and long-term effects of alterations of lipid metabolism during the perinatal stage. The first one was to demonstrate the importance of maternal body fat depot accumulation during the first half of pregnancy. We found that conditions like undernutrition circumscribed to this specific period when foetal growth is still small, that impede such fat accumulation not only restrain intrauterine development but also have long-term consequences, as shown by an impaired glucose tolerance when adults. Secondly, undernutrition during suckling has major long-term effect decreasing body weight, even though food intake was kept normal from the weaning period. Present findings also show that a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids during pregnancy and lactation has negative effects on offspring development, but cross fostered experiments showed that the effect was a consequence of the intake of these fatty acids during the lactation period rather than during pregnancy. Pups from dams that were fed a fish oil-rich diet during pregnancy and lactation were found to have altered glucose/insulin relationship at the age of 10 weeks. Since a omega-3 fatty acid-rich diet decreases milk yield during lactation, additional experiments were carried out to determine whether decreased food intake, altered dietary fatty acid composition, or both were responsible for the long-term effects on the glucose/insulin axis. Results show that the decreased food intake caused by a omega-3 fatty acid-rich diet rather than the change in milk composition during suckling was responsible for the reduced pancreatic glucose responsiveness to insulin release at 16 weeks of age. In conclusion, present findings indicate that impaired maternal fat accumulation during early pregnancy and food intake during lactation, rather than a difference in dietary fatty acid composition have a greater influence on postnatal development and affect glucose/insulin relationships in adult rats.
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