Maternal diet affects offspring liver health longterm

What is it about?

Obesity and its related conditions, including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), are increasing in parallel with the current obesity epidemic. Importantly, maternal obesity increases the risk of obesity and related conditions in the child. Thus, it is essential to help women improve maternal metabolism so as to prevent this transfer of obesity risk to the child. Furthermore, bacteria in the intestine can also increase or decrease risk of obesity depending on its composition. Because colonization of the gut begins at birth, exposure to beneficial bacteria as early as possible, for example from the mother, may help protect the child from obesity and related conditions later in life. Importantly, we have previously shown that, in an animal model of maternal obesity, supplementing the maternal diet with a specific dietary fibre called prebiotic fibre, which promotes the growth of beneficial gut bacteria, reduces body fat of offspring at 3 weeks of age. Therefore, we sought to determine whether this maternal dietary fibre supplementation would help improve metabolism and health in adult offspring that were fed a diet high in fat and sugar from weaning throughout adulthood. Overall, we found that offspring of diet-induced obese dams that were supplemented with dietary fibre had improved metabolic health and had less fat deposition in their livers after 21 weeks of high fat and high sugar feeding. Our data therefore suggest that maternal prebiotic intake protects offspring against fatty liver and related metabolic dysfunction, in part due to alterations in gut microbiota.

Featured Image