Abstract
Early ontogenetic periods and postnatal maturation in organisms are sex-specifically sensitive to hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA)-axis activities, related glucocorticoid secretions, and their effects on energy balance and homeostasis. Dietary polyunsaturated (PUFAs) and saturated (SFAs) fatty acids potentially play a major role in this context because PUFAs positively affect HPA-axis functions and a shift towards SFAs may impair body homeostasis. Here we show that dietary PUFAs positively affect postnatal body mass gain and diminish negative glucocorticoid-effects on structural growth rates in male guinea pigs. In contrast, SFAs increased glucocorticoid concentrations, which positively affected testes size and testosterone concentrations in males, but limited their body mass gain and first year survival rate. No distinct diet-related effects were detectable on female growth rates. These results highlight the importance of PUFAs in balancing body homeostasis during male’s juvenile development, which clearly derived from a sex-specific energetic advantage of dietary PUFA intakes compared to SFAs.
Highlights
Developmental processes in humans and animal models are highly dependent on environmental and nutritional conditions, which determine the progress of structural and functional changes in the body and enable a balanced energy homeostasis throughout lifetime[1,2,3]
PUFAs and SFAs may differently contribute to whole body homeostasis and energy balance via indirect effects on glucocorticoid secretion rates, instead of primarily targeting the neuronal control of the HPA-axis
The interaction effect of diet and age, revealed that saliva cortisol concentrations in SFA animals increased most strongly with age. This is indicated by the highest positively pronounced quadratic effect of age, which represents the deviation from linearity and the nonlinear changes with age (Table 1). This resulted in the highest cortisol levels in SFA animals, but especially in SFA males at an age of 120 days; cortisol levels were lower in control and PUFA animals (Fig. 1a, Table 2)
Summary
Developmental processes in humans and animal models are highly dependent on environmental and nutritional conditions, which determine the progress of structural and functional changes in the body and enable a balanced energy homeostasis throughout lifetime[1,2,3]. We test this hypothesis by determining and comparing the effects of dietary PUFAs and SFAs on the structural growth in male and female guinea pigs during postnatal maturation and linking this to cortisol levels as indicators of whole body homeostasis. No such sex difference was detected in control and SFA animals, but males generally reached a higher body mass than females (Table 2).
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