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Better prenatal care may improve muscle strength in newborns

Study links malnutrition and poor prenatal care to low muscle mass and strength throughout life.

By Amy Wallace
A new study has found that prenatal nutrition and stress levels can impact muscle strength and growth in fetuses and throughout life. Photo by Ernesto del Aguila III, National Human Genome Research Institute
A new study has found that prenatal nutrition and stress levels can impact muscle strength and growth in fetuses and throughout life. Photo by Ernesto del Aguila III, National Human Genome Research Institute

Feb. 3 (UPI) -- Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have found that malnutrition and increased maternal stress cause high levels of cortisol that affects fetal muscle growth.

Cortisol is an endogenous glucocorticoid, which is a class of stress steroid hormone that can impact muscle growth.

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"Lack of proper nutrition, a form of stress, in an expectant woman raises the levels of cortisol in her blood," Dr. Marta Fiorotto, associate professor of pediatrics-nutrition, molecular physiology and biophysics at the USDA/Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital and co-author of the study, said in a press release.

"We wanted to know whether it was the lack of proper nutrition during pregnancy itself or the exposure to the associated increases in the levels of glucocorticoids that affected fetal growth. In adults, glucocorticoids have negative effects in muscles, for instance, they cause atrophy and insulin resistance. Why would the newborn by any different?"

Fiorotto, who is the director of the Mouse Metabolic Research Unit at Baylor, and Dr. Ganga Gokulakrishnan, neonatologist at Texas Children's Hospital and assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine, collaborated on the study to see how glucocorticoids impacted the growth of fetal muscles in rats.

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Earlier rat studies have shown that exposing the fetus to glucocorticoids affect muscle growth but the team investigated the effect it has on other mechanisms of muscle growth, particularly the addition of nuclei to the fibers by satellite cells during early development.

"We were surprised by the magnitude of impairment we observed in the replication of satellite cells in the muscles of fetal rats exposed to glucocorticoids," Gokulakrishnan said. "Taking all the results together, we found that the effect of glucocorticoids on fetal muscle growth is quite complex; it depends on the duration, the level of glucocorticoids and the time during pregnancy when it occurs."

The study was published in the Journal of Endocrinology.

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