Endocrine Abstracts

Obesity prevalence is increasing across the globe. This includes women of childbearing age with recent statistics reporting that over half of women are now either overweight or obese during pregnancy in the UK. This is accompanied by an increased prevalence of gestational diabetes with some reports suggesting that one in seven babies in the world are born from a diabetic pregnancy. This is a major concern as evidence from humans and animal models suggests that developing in ut...

It is over twenty years since epidemiological studies revealed that there was a relationship between patterns of early growth and risk of conditions such as type 2 diabetes in later life. Studies of identical twins, individuals who were in utero during periods of famine and animal models have provided strong evidence that the early environment, including early nutrition, plays an important role in mediating these relationships. The concept of “early life programming”...

Strong evidence from studies in humans and animal models suggests that the nutritional environment to which a developing fetus is exposed impacts on long-term cardio-metabolic health. This concept has been termed nutritional programming. Although initial focus was on the detrimental consequences of fetal under-nutrition, the growing prevalence of obesity across the globe has focussed attention towards fetal over-nutrition. Obesity prevalence is increasing in all age groups, in...

In utero exposure to maternal obesity programs an increased risk of obesity. Animal models have shown that offspring obesity is often preceded by increased food intake, however, the mechanisms that mediate these changes are not understood. Using a mouse model of maternal diet-induced obesity we observed increased intake specifically of a high-fat pellet in adult offspring of obese mothers. Through small RNA sequencing, we identified programmed overexpression of miR-505-5p in t...

Introduction: Maternal obesity is associated with increased risk of metabolic dysfunction in the offspring. It is not clear which physiological aspects of the obese state that cause this metabolic programming. Obesity causes many metabolic changes but also low grade inflammation. In this study, we have determined if increased low grade inflammation was present in obese dams compared to controls dams during gestation.Methods: Female C57BL/6 mice were fed ...