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Body Composition and Metabolic Caging Analysis in High Fat Fed Mice

Body Composition and Metabolic Caging Analysis in High Fat Fed Mice

Published on: May 24, 2018

High fat diet prevents over-crowding induced decrease of sex ratio in mice.

Madhukar Shivajirao Dama¹, Negi Mahendra Pal Singh, Singh Rajender

¹Division of Endocrinology, Central Drug Research Institute, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Lucknow, India.

|February 2, 2011

Summary

Mothers under crowded conditions may favor daughters, but a high-fat diet can reduce this effect. This study explores how environmental stress and diet influence offspring sex ratio in mice.

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Area of Science:

Reproductive Biology
Behavioral Ecology
Mammalian Physiology

Background:

Adaptive theory suggests parental manipulation of offspring sex ratio (SR) based on future reproductive success.
Overcrowding is a significant environmental stressor that can impact reproductive outcomes.
Dietary factors, such as fat content, may modulate the effects of environmental stress on reproduction.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the impact of crowding on the sex ratio of offspring in mice.
To determine if dietary fat content influences pregnancy outcomes under crowded conditions.
To test the Trivers-Willard (TW) hypothesis in relation to maternal stress and diet.

Main Methods:

Female mice were housed under varying degrees of crowding and fed either a normal fat diet (NFD) or a high-fat diet (HFD).

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Outcomes of pregnancy, including dam body weight (DBW), litter size (LS), and sex ratio (SR), were analyzed.

Statistical analyses were performed to assess the effects of crowding and diet.

Main Results:

High-fat diet (HFD) dams exhibited higher average dam body weight (DBW), litter size (LS), and sex ratio (SR) at conception.
In the normal fat diet (NFD) group, male-biased litters declined with increasing crowding.
Litter size (LS) and sex ratio (SR) decreased with crowding in the NFD group, while only LS was reduced in the HFD group.

Conclusions:

Female mice under overcrowding stress shift offspring sex ratio (SR) in favor of daughters, supporting the TW hypothesis.
High-fat diet (HFD) consumption mitigates the influence of overcrowding on offspring sex ratio (SR).
Dietary interventions may offer a strategy to counteract the negative reproductive consequences of environmental stressors.