Abstract
BackgroundDietary long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) are of crucial importance for the development of neural tissues. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of a dietary supplementation in n-3 fatty acids in female rats during gestation and lactation on fatty acid pattern in brain glial cells phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) and phosphatidylserine (PS) in the neonates.MethodsSprague-Dawley rats were fed during the whole gestation and lactation period with a diet containing either docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, 0.55%) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, 0.75% of total fatty acids) or α-linolenic acid (ALA, 2.90%). At two weeks of age, gastric content and brain glial cell PE and PS of rat neonates were analyzed for their fatty acid and dimethylacetal (DMA) profile. Data were analyzed by bivariate and multivariate statistics.ResultsIn the neonates from the group fed with n-3 LC-PUFA, the DHA level in gastric content (+65%, P < 0.0001) and brain glial cell PE (+18%, P = 0.0001) and PS (+15%, P = 0.0009) were significantly increased compared to the ALA group. The filtered correlation analysis (P < 0.05) underlined that levels of dihomo-γ-linolenic acid (DGLA), DHA and n-3 docosapentaenoic acid (DPA) were negatively correlated with arachidonic acid (ARA) and n-6 DPA in PE of brain glial cells. No significant correlation between n-3 and n-6 LC-PUFA were found in the PS dataset. DMA level in PE was negatively correlated with n-6 DPA. DMA were found to occur in brain glial cell PS fraction; in this class DMA level was correlated negatively with DHA and positively with ARA.ConclusionThe present study confirms that early supplementation of maternal diet with n-3 fatty acids supplied as LC-PUFA is more efficient in increasing n-3 in brain glial cell PE and PS in the neonate than ALA. Negative correlation between n-6 DPA, a conventional marker of DHA deficiency, and DMA in PE suggests n-6 DPA that potentially be considered as a marker of tissue ethanolamine plasmalogen status. The combination of multivariate and bivariate statistics allowed to underline that the accretion pattern of n-3 LC-PUFA in PE and PS differ.
Highlights
Dietary long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) are of crucial importance for the development of neural tissues
arachidonic acid (ARA) and DHA can be synthesized from dietary essential fatty acids: linoleic (18:2n-6, LA) and a-linolenic (ALA, C18:3n-3) acids, respectively, through a series of elongation and desaturation steps catalyzed by the same key enzymes, namely Δ6- and Δ5-desaturases [2]
Animal data Supplementation with n-3 LC-PUFA during gestation did not modify any characteristics of the newborn rats compared to the control group in terms of number of pups per litter, weight and growth of the rats during the first two weeks of age of the pups (Table 2)
Summary
Dietary long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) are of crucial importance for the development of neural tissues. It has been shown that the level of DHA in retinal phospholipids has a strong impact on visual transduction processes and subsequently to visual function assessed by electroretinography [3,4]. The level of LA and ALA in the diet is very important to ensure adequate deposition of LC-PUFA in membrane phospholipids in the neonate [2,8,9,10] It has been demonstrated in many neonate animal models that the rate of conversion of ALA to DHA is not appropriate to sustain optimal DHA accretion in the brain and the retina just after birth [11,12,13]. It has been demonstrated that maternal supplementation with n-3 LC-PUFAs might positively influence cognitive performance in infants [15] but the number of conclusive reports in this area is limited
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