Role of Early Postnatal Nutrition During Lactation in Offspring Metabolic Health Programming

Download or read book Role of Early Postnatal Nutrition During Lactation in Offspring Metabolic Health Programming written by Sílvia Ribó Gené and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Childhood obesity and overweight can often cause severe complications, including hypertension, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, amongst other disorders. Several studies have shown that early postnatal nutrition is of great importance in modulating newborn health outcomes. In this work, we have studied the role of nutrition during early stages of life in long-term metabolic health applying two different approaches: a) transgenerational transmission of impaired metabolic health induced by accelerated early weight gain caused by postnatal overnutrition and b) short and long-term metabolic effects on offspring of maternal diet supplementation with betaine. Rapid weight gain during early life has been associated with several components of the Metabolic Syndrome. Previously we developed a mouse model of neonatal overfeeding and rapid weight gain by litter size reduction. Neonatal overnutrition (ON) altered the metabolism of the exposed individuals (F0). Furthermore, offspring (F1) and grand-offspring (F2) of postnatal overfed male mice also developed metabolic complications during adulthood. In agreement, it has been shown that environmental exposure on males can affect health in subsequent generations. Here, we hypothesized that epigenetic modifications, including DNA methylation, histone modifications, and noncoding-RNA, might be involved in the inheritance of diabetes risk in our model. We analyzed sperm methylome of F0 and F1 generations, and in the liver of 8-day-old mice of F1 and F2 generations, observing significant changes in methylation of specific DNA regions. We found 912 probes differentially methylated when comparing control and ON mice throughout the three generations, between the two tissues. Our results suggest that methylation of the male germ line caused by nutritional challenges during early life may carry information that influence metabolism across multiple generations. We then analyzed gene expression by qPCR of these genes in the liver of 8-days-old mice finding differences in some genes. Breast milk composition is important in modulating growth and health of the infant. Amongst the many nutrients that breast milk contains one worth highlighting is glycine betaine (or betaine). In addition to decreasing levels of fat in the liver, previous data demonstrated that maternal supplementation with betaine during breastfeeding also improves glucose homeostasis and modulates offspring early-life gut microbiota composition. Gut microbiota in the newborn is defined at birth and during early nutrition. Breast milk also contains essential bacteria that can influence gut microbiota composition of the breastfed infant. Changes in the microbiome caused by antibiotic administration during early life were significantly correlated to higher adiposity and development of obesity during adulthood. We observed beneficial short and long-term metabolic effects of betaine on offspring and protection against adult diet-induced obesity. We have analyzed ilea and gut microbiota of mice supplemented with betaine, and with or without antibiotics at different stages of life. Analyzing the microbiome we found that microbial community composition was modulated by betaine supplementation in 2-week-old offspring. Antibiotic treatment annulled completely long-term betaine-induced effects on body weight. Moreover, glucose tolerance was no longer improved when combining antibiotics with betaine treatment. -- TDX.