Maternal Swimming Exercise Induces Sex-Dependent Changes in Mitochondrial Metabolism and Dynamics in the Cerebellum of Wistar Rat Offspring

The field of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) investigates how environmental interventions during critical periods of development can permanently modify offspring metabolism. In this context, beneficial interventions such as maternal physical exercise during pregnancy may program offspring metabolism and act as a protective metabolic programming strategy linked to positive phenotypic plasticity. However, the cellular mechanisms underlying the effects of maternal exercise during pregnancy on the offspring remain to be fully elucidated. This study aimed to investigate the neuroadaptive effects of maternal physical exercise during pregnancy on the expression of genes and the immunocontent of proteins related to mitochondrial metabolism and dynamics in the offspring cerebellum.

Female Wistar rats (120 d old) were subjected to five weekly sessions of 30 min of swimming, beginning one week before mating and continuing throughout pregnancy until delivery. On postnatal day 7 (PND7), the offspring of both sexes were euthanized, and the cerebellum was collected and stored at -80°C for subsequent analyses.

Maternal exercise increased the expression of genes related to mitochondrial biogenesis (Ppargc1a, Tfam, Nrf1, Nfe2l2, Cs), dynamics (Mfn1, Mfn2, Opa1, Dnm1l), and Fndc5 exclusively in female offspring, while no significant differences in protein immunocontent were observed in either sex.

These findings suggest that maternal exercise during pregnancy promotes early metabolic programming in the cerebellum of female offspring by modulating mitochondrial gene expression in a sex-dependent manner. The observed effects contribute to the understanding of sex-specific neurodevelopmental programming induced by gestational exercise.