A high fat diet during pregnancy wrecks immune systems of baby — ‘leaving them prone to severe disease later in life’
- Poor maternal nutrition hinders development of the fetal immune system
- Maternal obesity may also influence the development of fetal bone marrow
- Poor maternal diet suppresses expression of B cells, the makers of antibodies
Eating junk food while pregnant may hinder the development of babies’ immune systems, leaving them vulnerable to future illness, a study suggests.
For the first time, scientists showed high-fat diets damage important immune cells in the unborn offspring — in research on monkeys.
Experts have suspected for a long time that being an overweight mother has a host of negative health impacts on children.
Now they have shown – at least in primates – that a bad diet, as well as maternal obesity hinders the development of unborn babies’ immune systems.
Excess fat tissue in bone marrow cells is believed to have a negative effect on the production and circulation of blood cells, including immune cells, in a fetus.
Co-author of the study Dr Oleg Varlamov, from the Oregon National Primate Research Center, said: ‘The main implication of this study is that maternal obesity may influence the development of the fetal bone marrow and fetal immune system.’
A team of scientists reported that a high fat maternal diet is a severe impediment to the development of a fetus’ immune system, potentially leaving them vulnerable to post-natal illness
The team of scientists from California, Oregon, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Kentucky investigated the effects of a high-fat Western-style diet in pregnant macaques.
One half of the female macaques was fed a high-fat diet for about five and a half years starting at puberty, the other half received basic monkey chow.
The high-fat diet group were more likely to trigger the premature formation of fat cells in the fetal bone marrow.
It prompted a strong bodily immune response in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs), which are responsible for producing blood cells, including in response to outside viral attacks.
During the later stages of gestation, the fetal bone marrow in primates becomes the main site where immune cells called macrophages and B-lymphocytes are produced.
Those immune cells are produced as a result of the HSPCs reaching their mature cellular form in a process called differentiation.
Dr Varlamov said: ‘Maternal obesity greatly impacted the ability of fetal blood stem cells to produce B-lymphocytes—immune cells that make antibodies in response to infection—and made fetal blood stem cells more inflamed.’
The team’s findings represent the first demonstration of the effects of maintaining a high-fat diet during pregnancy on a developing fetus.
Though a major caveat, the team said, is the study’s small sample size. Just nine control fetuses and four high-fat Western diet fetuses were studied. Specifically, the scientists analysed the femurs of fetuses.
The researchers said their findings were further limited in that they did not consider the effects of maternal obesity on the baby’s development after birth.
‘This study sets the stage for understanding the link between maternal obesity, prenatal nutrition, and diseases involving immune progeny of the HSPC compartment in children,’ Dr Varlamov said.
It is widely accepted that maintaining a poor diet during pregnancy will have negative effects on the development of the unborn child.
Lackluster nutrition hinders fetal growth, increases the risk of low birth weight, and impairs organ development.
Their findings were published Thursday in the journal Stem Cell Reports.
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