Impact of maternal diet

Diabetes risk identified

There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the earliest origins of health throughout the lifecourse are found in the period between pre-conception until around the age of two – the first 1,000 days of life.  Healthy diets immediately before and during pregnancy and lactation may be of real benefit to babies – and future generations of offspring.

Recent research from Leicester University and the University of Cambridge’s Medical Research Council Toxicology unit in the UK, the Steno Diabetes Centre in Denmark, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, suggests that having a poor diet during pregnancy will risk the chance of offspring developing diabetes in later life.

The research focused on the way diet in early life affects both the composition and behaviour of fat tissues.  While this laboratory study was conducted with rats, the research team cautiously suggests a generalisability to the human population, and identifies a mechanism through which poor early nutrition may impact the development and location of fat tissue. High levels of a newly identified molecule causes fat to be stored inappropriately in the muscle and liver, and is linked to both insulin resistance and high levels of diabetes.

The contemporary diet leads to storage of excess calories in fat cells, and when the cells become over-burdened they store calories in and around organs such as the liver, which can cause insulin resistance and render people more susceptible to type 2 diabetes in later life. This study lends even more credence to the early origins of health hypothesis that C3 has been exploring recently (click here >>).

Sources: NHS Choices, 9 January 2012; The Telegraph, 6 January 2012; Ferland-McCollough et al., ‘Programming of adipose tissue miR-483-3p and GDF-3 expression by maternal diet in type 2 diabetes’, Cell Death and Differentiation, 6 January 2012.

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