PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 15 (UPI) -- Eating an excessively high fat-diet during pregnancy can lead to liver disease in newborns, U.S. researchers have found.
"Many Americans assume that being fat during pregnancy equates as being unhealthy for the baby and being skinny results in a healthy pregnancy; however, that is not necessarily true," Kevin Grove of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Ore., said in a statement.
"Our research suggests that consumption of a diet high in saturated fats during pregnancy in both obese and lean individuals may be linked to the increase in fatty liver disease in children."
The researchers fed macaque monkeys either a normal healthy diet or diet high in saturated fats -- comparable to the typical American diet.
Like humans, some monkeys eating the high-fat diet developed obesity and others maintained a normal body weight. However, when investigating the fetal and infant offspring it was observed that all offspring of animals consuming a high fat diet had signs of fatty liver disease.
The study, published in the online edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, found all of the high-fat diet babies, whether the mothers were obese or lean, had increased body fat compared to babies born to animals eating a lower fat diet. The study also demonstrated that feeding a low-fat diet to obese animals protected the offspring from developing fatty livers.
