Metabolic profile Assessment in offspring of wistar rats treated during pregnancy and lactation with sodium selenite

Abstract

The essential micronutrient selenium has been linked to property exhibiting insulin‐mimetic effects in metabolism. On the other hand, some studies shows that selenium supplementation at high doses can increase the incidence risk of diabetes. Thereby, due to an inverse correlation between the serum selenium concentration and the progressing gestational period, the objective here was evaluating offspring metabolism of female Wistar rats treated during pregnancy and lactation with sodium selenite. For this purpose, two groups (n=6 each and ~ 250g) of female Wistar rats were underwent to the following treatments: isotonic saline or sodium selenite (1mg/kg, p.o). Our results indicate that treated group, after weaning, had higher expression of type 2 deiodinase in brown adipose tissue than control. Moreover, the programmed offspring had higher milk intake and had an increased lipid oxidation. Therefore, we conclude that selenium supplementation during pregnancy and lactation alters offspring metabolic profile. In this context, we conjecture that possible selenium induced insulin resistance in offspring can be caused by thyroid hormones genomic and non genomic actions.Support: FAPERJ & CNPq.