Confirmed the relationship between prenatal stress and obesity in rats.

-Many women maintain the same pace during pregnancy to almost give birth. However, Spanish researchers warn of the relationship between the stress of the mother during this stage with baby obesity in adult life

Spain, April of 2013.- the intrauterine environment plays an important role in the health of the offspring. Now, the University of Navarra experts say that the stress of the mother – due to socio-economic causes or psychosocial – is associated with the development of obesity-related diseases.

The increasing prevalence of obesity is not attributable only to genetic factors or poor nutrition, but also the style of life and adverse environmental factors ”, explains to SINC Javier Campión, principal investigator of the new study these environmental factors may impact on the epigenetic mechanismsresponsible for the control of genes beyond the genetic code ”.

For authors, the pace that characterizes the society produces a rise in the rate of stress in the population and this increase, parallel to obesity rates, is necessary to the analysis of the interaction between these two factors, which affect not only the adult age.

The study, published in the journal Stress, aimed to determine the effect of chronic stress moderately during the last week of embryonic development in phenotypic, biochemical and hormonal changes in adult rats.

a healthy lifestyle during pregnancy also consists of minimizing the stress. / Mr. Toaster.

Thus, researchers studied two groups of rats, with and without stress, and examined alterations in the expression of genes related to obesity and metabolism of glucocorticoids in the white adipose tissue in their offspring.

The general conclusion that we got was that an adverse situation during the intrauterine development could lead to the animals due to the ingestion of a high calorie diet had a greater increase of body fat and biochemical, hormonal and genetic alterations ”, says Campion.

In addition, the authors insist that these changes in adulthood induced by eating a diet high in fat and sugars cause obesity and other related disorders like insulin resistance – whose result is the development of type 2 diabetes –.

Pregnancies in the 21st century

Today many women are still with her hectic life during pregnancy to almost give birth, without realizing the stress that may be suffering ”, says the researcher.

Experts argue that stress – during the normal life of a woman may not affect you to health – could be altering the development of the baby and predisposing to the development of pathologies in adulthood, possibly due to epigenetic modifications. Obesity-related problems are responsible for each year of more than 2.8 million deaths around the world.

A healthy lifestyle during pregnancy is not just a good diet, a good supply of vitamins and minerals, but also in having a life quiet, stress-free ”, Campion concludes.

References:

L. Paternain, A.L. de la garza, M.A. Batlle, miracle, J.A. Martínez & J. Campion. F.I. Prenatal stress increases the obesogenic effects of a high-fat-sucrose diet in adult rats in a sex-specific manner ”. Stress, 16 (2): 220 – 232, March 2013.

Leon L, Batlle MA, De la Garza, miracle FI, Martinez JA, Campion J. Transcriptomic and epigenetic changes in the hypothalamus are involved in an increased susceptibility to a high-fat-sucrose diet in prenatally stressed female rats ”. Neuroendocrinology. 2012; 96 (3): 249-60.