Endocrine Abstracts

Maternal programming increases the risk of alterations in the offspring’s HPA axis. Previously we showed that maternal undernutrition in sheep induces epigenetic changes in the glucocorticoid receptors (GR) within hypothalamic energy balance pathways, without affecting HPA axis GR. However, these studies focussed on fetal tissues1. Here, we investigated whether GR is epigenetically altered in the HPA axis of adult offspring to determine the status of the pathwa...

There is increased prevalence of obesity and diabetes in offspring from mothers subjected to adverse conditions during pregnancy. Our previous work demonstrated that maternal undernutrition causes epigenetic changes in hypothalamic energy regulating networks in foetal sheep. We hypothesise that these changes will persist into adulthood. Therefore, this study examined the impact of maternal undernutrition on epigenetic and mRNA expression of hypothalamic regulators of energy ba...

Maternal undernutrition influences the development of obesity and diabetes in the adult offspring. Previous work has shown that moderate maternal undernutrition may alter the stress–response of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis; however, it is not clear if this is the mechanism for consequent obesity in offspring.The aim of this study was to analyse epigenetic changes in the POMC and GR genes in the pituitary as markers of HPA ...