Obesity during pregnancy in rats adversely influences brain function in the offspring as adults

Helena C. Parkington, Ammar A. Abdulwahid, Farshad A. Mansouri, David Finkelstein, Harold A. Coleman

Research output: Contribution to conferenceAbstractpeer-review

Abstract

Obesity is a low-grade inflammatory state and a fetus developing in such an inflammatory milieu is susceptible to developing various disorders. After birth, children of obese mothers are at increased risk of obesity, metabolic syndrome and neurodevelopmental abnormalities, eg reduced cognitive capacity, developmental delay, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder schizophrenia, and autism spectrum disorders. Here we used rats to test the effects of maternal obesity on neuronal networking and to determine if establishing a good diet at weaning could rescue deficits.
Rats gestated and maintained on an obesogenic Western diet (WD) had impaired spatial and working memory compared with rats on control chow (CC) at 10 weeks of age. Switching to CC when 3 weeks old completely rescued working memory but had no effect on spatial memory. Brain slices from 15 week old WD male rats had
Original languageEnglish
Pages290
Number of pages1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2019

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