“This study in rats adds to the evidence that a mother's diet may sometimes alter the control of certain genes in her unborn child, says Jeremy Pearson of the British Heart Foundation.”
The impact of a poor diet during pregnancy can last a lifetime for a mother’s offspring, boosting a child’s risk of heart disease and cancer later in life, new research shows.
The study in rats, published in the March 7 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the offspring of malnourished mother rats have an increased risk of type 2 diabetes caused by the age-related silencing of a gene that contributes to pancreatic function and, by extension, insulin production. In addition, the researchers found that poor diet exacerbates the rate at which these modifications accumulate during the aging process.
Although the influence of environmental factors on genetic expression throughout life has been well-established by scientists specializing in the field of epigenetics, little has been understood about the interplay of maternal diet during gestation and the genetic expression in later life.
“We already know that a healthy pregnancy is important in shaping a child's health, and their risk of heart disease as they grow up,” says Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation. “The reasons why are not well understood, but this study in rats adds to the evidence that a mother's diet may sometimes alter the control of certain genes in her unborn child.”
Understanding factors that increase a person’s chances of developing diabetes is of huge importance given the prevalence and cost of the disease. As many as 25.8 million children and adults in the United States are diabetic, a group that incurred as much as $116 billion in direct medical costs during 2007 according to the National Diabetes Fact Sheet 2011, a comprehensive assessment of the impact of diabetes, jointly produced by the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, the American Diabetes Association, and other organizations.
March 11, 2011
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-healthy_eating_for_two.html