New genetic link between pregnancy diet and offspring obesity
20 April 2011
Scientists funded by the Medical Research Council have discovered that a mother’s nutrition during pregnancy can strongly influence her child’s risk of obesity many years later, by altering how their DNA functions.
An international study, based at the University of Southampton and involving the Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit (LEU) at the university, has shown for the first time that during pregnancy, a mother’s diet can alter the function of her child’s DNA. The process, called epigenetic change, can lead to the child tending to lay down more fat. Importantly, the study shows that this effect acts independently of how fat or thin the mother is and of the child’s weight at birth.
The research team measured epigenetic changes in nearly three hundred children at birth and showed that these strongly predicted the degree of obesity at six or nine years of age. Professor Godfrey was particularly surprised by the size of the effect:
"What is surprising is that it explains a quarter of the difference in the fatness of children six to nine years later. This study indicates that measures to prevent childhood obesity should be targeted on improving a mother’s nutrition and her baby’s development in the womb. These powerful new epigenetic measurements might prove useful in monitoring the health of the child.”
Professor Cyrus Cooper, director of the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, commented:
“Medical Research Council population-based studies have shown that early life factors influence the risk of disease many years later. Now we can begin to see the mechanisms by which this happens, opening up new avenues for medical research and interventions.”
This research makes an important contribution to the wider study of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD), which focuses on the concept that major diseases such as coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, Type 2 diabetes and osteoporosis are the consequences of poor fetal growth and small size at birth. Pioneering MRC research from the 1990s, at the Southampton Unit and in Cambridge, opened up this area and led to the ‘thrifty phenotype’ hypothesis. This states that the associations between poor fetal and infant growth with some health disorders (including those listed above) result from poor nutrition in early life. This study supports this concept and suggests a potential genetic process linking maternal nutrition with a susceptibility to obesity in children.
The findings are published online in the journal Diabetes and will be printed on April 26. The study followed children whose mothers had taken part in two longitudinal studies in Southampton funded by the Medical Research Council, WellChild (previously Children Nationwide), Arthritis Research UK and the University of Southampton. Other funding for the epigenetic measures came from New Zealand’s National Research Centre for Growth and Development, the UK National Institute for Health Research and the British Heart Foundation. The study consortium involved the Universities of Southampton and Singapore, the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences, the Liggins Institute of the University of Auckland, AgResearch New Zealand and the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton.
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