Exercise during pregnancy may help reduce the side effects of parental obesity in children

A new study in mice suggests that exercise during pregnancy may help prevent children-; especially boys-; from developing obesity-related health problems to their parents. The study is published ahead of print in the Journal of Applied Geology. He was elected as APSselect article for February.

Obesity during pregnancy increases the risk of children of obese parents having a metabolic disorder, such as diabetes, later in life. Exercise during pregnancy has been shown to improve pregnancy outcomes, leading to a healthy birth. However, little is known about whether physical activity during pregnancy can improve metabolic health and reduce the risk of negative changes in next-generation gene expression due to the health or lifestyle of its parents.

Researchers conducted two parallel arms of a study in which they examined the effects of maternal and paternal obesity on the metabolic health of offspring and gene expression in skeletal muscle. Adult mice were fed either a high-fat diet to induce obesity or a normal rodent diet for six weeks before they started breeding. Some mothers (dams) had access to an exercise wheel during pregnancy while others did not. Children who came out of one of the following categories:

• from obese mothers who exercised during pregnancy and fathers fathers,
• from obese mothers who did not exercise during pregnancy and fathers,
• from obese fathers and lean mothers who exercised during pregnancy, and
• from obese fathers and lean mothers who did not exercise during pregnancy.

Test groups were compared with a control group of offspring in which both parents were slim and followed a normal rodent diet. The research group analyzed gene mutation, gene expression, blood sugar (glucose) clearance and insulin levels of all young mice.

Females and females of obese women benefited from their mothers’ exercise by developing better insulin and glucose, but on average males showed greater improvement than their female peers. For example, male children of obese parents showed a negative glucose effect, but the animals from mothers who exercised during pregnancy showed normal glucose clearance on time with a glucose tolerance test. The changes in females were consistent, but much lower.

Maternal exercise also produced the altered gene expression that occurred in mice of both sexes from obese dams. Several of the genes affected include those that are involved in the regulation of immunity and fat metabolism.

The results also suggest that “mother [obesity] more powerful than his father [obesity] in predicting the young, especially the males, to metabolic impairment as an adult, and maternal exercise during transition only had a positive effect on both males and females, ”wrote the the authors.