High-fat diet from parental generation exaggerates body and adipose tissue weights in pregnant offspring.

Frank T Spradley,Christopher Torrens

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0237708

Frank T Spradley, Christopher Torrens

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237708

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Abstract

Parental high-fat diet (HFD) programs for obesity and hypertension in female offspring in rats, but it is unknown how the pregnancies of these offspring are impacted. Therefore, the hypothesis was tested that parental HFD exaggerates obesity and hypertension during pregnancy of the offspring. Wistar Hannover rat dams (the parental, P generation) were maintained on normal-fat diet (NFD) or HFD from weaning and were kept on respective diets through pregnancy and lactation. Their offspring (the first filial, F1 generation) were weaned onto the same diet as the P generation, or they were changed to the other diet to determine if combined HFD in the P and F1 generations exaggerates body weight and blood pressure levels during pregnancy in these offspring. This diet paradigm resulted in the following groups of pregnant F1 offspring: P-NFD/F1-NFD, P-HFD/F1-NFD, P-NFD/F1-HFD, and P-HFD/F1-HFD. Maternal body and adipose tissue weights were greatest in the P-HFD/F1-HFD group compared to the other 3 groups by the end of pregnancy. Plasma leptin and conscious mean arterial blood pressure were not significantly different between any group, although there was a main effect for increased blood pressure in the F1-HFD groups. Circulating levels of the antihypertensive pregnancy factor, placental growth factor (PlGF), were assessed. Although average PlGF levels were similar among all groups, correlative studies revealed that lower levels of PlGF were associated with higher blood pressure only in the P-HFD/F1-HFD group. In summary, HFD feeding from the P generation exaggerated HFD-induced body and adipose tissue weights in the pregnant offspring.

Highlights

Increasing evidence supports that insults in the parental (P) generation, including during the perinatal period of gestation and lactation, have lasting effects on body weight and blood pressure regulation in female offspring; this has been reported in several studies in rodents
Upon weaning at 3 weeks of age, body weight was significantly greater in the female F1 offspring from P-high-fat diet (HFD) versus P-normal-fat diet (NFD) dams (Fig 2)
Body weight was tracked weekly until 13 weeks of age in each of the 4 groups of the female F1 offspring: 1) P-NFD/F1-NFD (N = 6), 2) P-HFD/F1-NFD (N = 8), 3) P-NFD/F1-HFD (N = 7), and 4) P-HFD/F1-HFD (N = 11)

Summary

Introduction

Increasing evidence supports that insults in the parental (P) generation, including during the perinatal period of gestation and lactation, have lasting effects on body weight and blood pressure regulation in female offspring; this has been reported in several studies in rodents. Parental HFD affects offspring’s pregnancy from weaning in the F1 generation resulted in exaggerated body and fat weights in these offspring, but not exaggerated blood pressure levels [3, 4] These data support that HFD during the P generation predisposes to exaggerated HFD-induced body fat weights in the female offspring accompanied by elevated blood pressure. The above investigations showed that HFD in the P generation affects body weight and blood pressure regulation in the F1 generation, those experiments were conducted in non-pregnant female offspring It is unknown how HFD consumption in the P generation impacts the pregnancies of the F1 generation. Little is known about body weight and adipose tissue mass during pregnancy in these offspring, which highlights the novelty of the current study

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Discussion

Conclusion