Abstract
Obesity is an escalating health crisis of pandemic proportions and by all accounts it has yet to reach its peak. Growing evidence suggests that obesity may have its origins in utero. Recent studies have shown that maternal obesity during pregnancy may promote adipogenesis in offspring. However, these studies were largely based on cell culture models. Whether or not maternal obesity impacts on offspring adipogenesis in vivo remains to be fully established. Furthermore, in vivo adipogenic differentiation has been shown to happen at distinct time periods, one during development (developmental adipogenesis—which is complete by 4 weeks of age in mice) and another in adulthood in response to feeding a high-fat (HF) diet (obesogenic adipogenesis). We therefore set out to determine whether maternal obesity impacted on offspring adipocyte hyperplasia in vivo and whether maternal obesity impacted on developmental or obesogenic adipogenesis, or both. Our findings reveal that maternal obesity is associated with enhanced obesogenic adipogenesis in HF-fed offspring. Interestingly, in newly weaned (4-week-old) offspring, maternal obesity is associated with adipocyte hypertrophy, but there were no changes in adipocyte number. Our results suggest that maternal obesity impacts on offspring obesogenic adipogenesis but does not affect developmental adipogenesis.
Highlights
Obesity is an alarming threat of pandemic proportions
One potential mechanism underlying the causal relationship between maternal obesity during pregnancy and increased offspring adiposity and obesity susceptibility in later life is the programming of adipogenesis in offspring white adipose tissue (WAT)
Total adiposity measurements were reflected in gonadal white adipose tissue weights wherein male and female chow-fed offspring of obese dams (HF/C) had increased gWAT weights
Summary
Obesity is an alarming threat of pandemic proportions. Its economic impact is crippling, costing the global economy tens of billions of U.S dollars each year [1]. Recent years have seen an alarming rise in excessive nutrient intake during gestation in developed countries [3]. These trends are concerning in light of numerous animal models showing that maternal obesity and high-fat (HF) or high-calorie consumption during pregnancy predisposes offspring to obesity and metabolic disease in later life [4,5,6]. One potential mechanism underlying the causal relationship between maternal obesity during pregnancy and increased offspring adiposity and obesity susceptibility in later life is the programming of adipogenesis in offspring white adipose tissue (WAT)
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