SAN ANTONIO, Feb. 9 (UPI) -- A U.S. researcher suggests obese pregnant women may be setting up their babies to become obese adults.
Dr. Peter Nathanielsz of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio says the offspring of obese mothers may become insensitive to leptin -- an appetite-decreasing brain hormone.
"Developmental programming sets the scene that influences one's health for the rest of life," Nathanielsz says in a statement. "Some differences, such as heart disease and obesity, may not appear until much later in life."
However, the animal studies conducted by Nathanielsz and colleagues also suggest the "transgenerational cycle of obesity" might be broken if moms lose weight before becoming pregnant.
Nathanielsz and colleagues report normal leptin levels in the offspring of moms who lose weight before becoming pregnant.
Also, fat mass and fat cell size that increase in the offspring of obese mothers were significantly reversed -- though not completely abolished -- in the moms who lost weight, the study says.
Study subjects were the male offspring of female rats fed "fatty chow" from weaning through adolescence. One group of female rats stayed on "fatty chow" during mating, pregnancy and lactation. The other group were switched to normal diets a month before mating.
