Early Infant Nutrition and Metabolic Programming: What Are the Potential Molecular Mechanisms?

Abstract

The developmental origins of health and disease hypothesis contend that fetal and early postnatal environmental factors, in particular nutrition, influence long-term health in offspring. Accumulating evidence in humans show that fetal under- and over-nutrition induce long-term changes in gene expression and influence phenotypes in the offspring through epigenetic modifications. As such, epigenetics has received important attention for its potential role in health and disease programming. However, much less is known regarding the mechanisms underlying early postnatal nutrition programming of long-term health. Breast milk is known to be the best source of nutrition for infants. It contains many bioactive constituents that are able to induce changes in DNA methylation pattern. This review will present potential molecular mechanisms through which early postnatal nutrition may influence health and disease programming, focusing on research that used “-omics” approaches (i.e., epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics).