Maternal DHA Supplementation during Pregnancy and Lactation in the Rat Protects the Offspring against High-Calorie Diet-Induced Hepatic Steatosis.

Amran Daher-Abdi,Mikaël Croyal,Luis Antonio Reyes Castro,Elena Zambrano,Francisco Bolaños-Jiménez,Khadija Ouguerram,Sandra Olvera Hernández,Juan Antonio García-Santillán,Carla Elena Mezo-González

doi:10.3390/nu13093075

Abstract

Maternal supplementation during pregnancy with docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is internationally recommended to avoid postpartum maternal depression in the mother and improve cognitive and neurological outcomes in the offspring. This study was aimed at determining whether this nutritional intervention, in the rat, protects the offspring against the development of obesity and its associated metabolic disorders. Pregnant Wistar rats received an extract of fish oil enriched in DHA or saline (SAL) as placebo by mouth from the beginning of gestation to the end of lactation. At weaning, pups were fed standard chow or a free-choice, high-fat, high-sugar (fc-HFHS) diet. Compared to animals fed standard chow, rats exposed to the fc-HFHS diet exhibited increased body weight, liver weight, body fat and leptin in serum independently of saline or DHA maternal supplementation. Nevertheless, maternal DHA supplementation prevented both the glucose intolerance and the rise in serum insulin resulting from consumption of the fc-HFHS diet. In addition, animals from the DHA-fc-HFHS diet group showed decreased hepatic triglyceride accumulation compared to SAL-fc-HFHS rats. The beneficial effects on glucose homeostasis declined with age in male rats. Yet, the preventive action against hepatic steatosis was still present in 6-month-old animals of both sexes and was associated with decreased hepatic expression of lipogenic genes. The results of the present work show that maternal DHA supplementation during pregnancy programs a healthy phenotype into the offspring that was protective against the deleterious effects of an obesogenic diet.

Highlights

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.It has well established that the nutritional status of the mother during gestation and lactation is a key determinant factor in the long-term health of the offspring
Animals born to dams supplemented with docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) or with saline who were exposed to the FcHSHF diet exhibited elevated circulating levels of leptin and triglycerides compared to animals fed standard chow (Table 2). These results indicated that maternal DHA supplementation had no protective effects on the increased body weight, fat accretion and hyperlipidemia associated with obesity
Obese rats from DHAsupplemented dams showed lower levels of triglycerides and cholesterol in the liver and better glucose tolerance than their saline-supplemented counterparts. These results show that maternal DHA supplementation induces physiological changes in the offspring that are protective against the development of hepatic steatosis and glucose intolerance induced by high-calorie feeding

Summary

Introduction

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.It has well established that the nutritional status of the mother during gestation and lactation is a key determinant factor in the long-term health of the offspring. Of numerous experimental studies in various animal species and conceptualized under the hypothesis of the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD), known as metabolic programming or nutritional programming [5,6,7]. According to this hypothesis, an imbalanced nutritional environment during in utero development and/or neonatal life sensitizes offspring to developing metabolic and mental diseases via epigenetic mechanisms that translate the effects of early nutritional events, leading to long-term changes in behavior and energy homeostasis. Maternal supplementation with docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is a common clinical practice

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