What is it about?
In this narrative review, we assessed the available evidence from predominantly animal, but also clinical literature, for a relationship between maternal malnutrition and later effects on fertility of the offspring . The available evidence, at the time, was restricted to female, as oppose to male, fertility.
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Why is it important?
At the time, relatively few studies had considered the effect of differential early environmental exposures on reproductive function and fecundity in monoovular species such as the sheep, cow and human.
Perspectives
The available evidence suggests that prenatal insults, undernutrition for example, has little effect on lifetime reproductive capacity despite subtle effects on the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis and the gonadal progenitor cell complement. The postnatal environment is clearly important, however, since neonatal/adolescent growth acceleration (itself not independent from prenatal experience) has been shown to significantly influence fecundity in farm animals. In concluding, it appears there is little hard evidence to indicate that offspring fertility and reproductive senescence in the human and in farm animal species is overtly affected by prenatal nutritional exposure
Professor David S Gardner
University of Nottingham
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This page is a summary of: Developmental programming of reproduction and fertility: what is the evidence?, animal, July 2008, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s1751731108002607.
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