Type 2 diabetes may be inherited

ROME, Aug. 21 (UPI) -- A form of inheritance may have a role in the rising rate of diabetes, especially in children and young adults, in the United States, Italian researchers said.

Children get half their genes from their mother and half from fathers. However, scientists are just starting to understand additional kinds of inheritance like metabolic programming, which occurs when an insult during a critical period of development, either in the womb or soon after birth, triggers permanent changes in metabolism.

Researchers at the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome found that a high-fat diet induced type 2 diabetes in adult mice and that this effect was reversed by stopping the diet.

However, if female mice continued a high-fat diet during pregnancy and/or suckling, their offspring also had a greater frequency of diabetes development, even though the offspring were given a moderate-fat diet.

The study, published in the Journal of Lipid Research, found that these mice were then mated with healthy mice, and the next generation offspring could develop diabetes as well.

In other words, exposing a fetal mouse to high levels of saturated fats can cause it and its offspring to acquire diabetes, even if the mouse goes off the high-fat diet and its young are never directly exposed.