Abstract
Maternal obesity before pregnancy affects the development of obesity in female offspring
Leewen Rattanatray
PhD candidate, Discipline of Physiology, University of Adelaide and Samson Institute University of South Australia
The prevalence of obesity is increasing globally and contributing to more women entering pregnancy overweight and obese. Maternal obesity implicates the health of the mother and child. The mother is more likely to have poor fertility rates and pregnancy outcomes and is at risk of developing gestational diabetes during pregnancy. Maternal obesity also increases the risk of giving birth to a heavier term infant with an increase in fat mass at infancy. Being born heavier and fatter contributes to the risk of becoming overweight or obese in childhood and adulthood. It is not known whether maternal obesity entering pregnancy, and not maternal weight gain during pregnancy, is associated with an increased risk of obesity in the offspring and whether maternal weight loss by dieting before becoming pregnant can improve the long term health of your child.
We have developed a "novel" model of maternal obesity in the sheep in the period before and around the time of conception to determine if this period is involved in the development of obesity in the offspring. Using this model we have found that female offspring of mothers who were obese entering pregnancy were more susceptible to the development of increased fat mass than male offspring. We will report changes in the expression of key genes involved in the regulation of fat production and storage. Furthermore we have shown that a dietary intervention in these obese mothers before entering pregnancy is able to abolish the increase in fat mass of the female offspring and potentially improve their long term health.
