A Maternal High Fat Diet Leads to Sex-Specific Programming of Mechanical Properties in Supraspinatus Tendons of Adult Rat Offspring

Abstract

Background: Over half of women of reproductive age are now overweight or obese. The impact of maternal high-fat diet (HFD) is emerging as an important factor in the development and health of musculoskeletal tissues in offspring, however there is a paucity of evidence examining its effects on tendon. Alterations in the early life environment during critical periods of tendon growth therefore have the potential to influence tendon health that cross the lifespan. We hypothesised that a maternal HFD would alter biomechanical, morphological and gene expression profiles of adult offspring rotator cuff tendon.Materials and Methods: Female Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly assigned to either: control diet (CD; 10% kcal or 43 mg/g from fat) or HFD (45% kcal or 235 mg/g from fat) 14 days prior to mating and throughout pregnancy and lactation. Eight female and male offspring from each maternal diet group were weaned onto a standard chow diet and then culled at postnatal day 100 for tissue collection. Supraspinatus tendons were used for mechanical testing and histological assessment (cellularity, fibre organisation, nuclei shape) and tail tendons were collected for gene expression analysis.Results: A maternal HFD increased the elasticity (Young's Modulus) in the supraspinatus tendon of male offspring. Female offspring tendon biomechanical properties were not affected by maternal HFD. Gene expression of SCX and COL1A1 were reduced in male and female offspring of maternal HFD, respectively. Despite this, tendon histological organisation were similar between maternal diet groups in both sexes.Conclusion: An obesogenic diet during pregnancy increased tendon elasticity in male, but not female, offspring. This is the first study to demonstrate that maternal diet can modulate the biomechanical properties of offspring tendon. A maternal HFD may be an important factor in regulating adult offspring tendon homeostasis that may predispose offspring to developing tendinopathies and adverse tendon outcomes in later life.

Association between High-Fat Diet during Pregnancy and Heart Weight of the Offspring: A Multivariate and Mediation Analysis

“…The influence of maternal intrauterine exposure to adverse factors on the offspring health of different sexes has always been an important topic in fetal-derived diseases [ 6 , 24 , 25 , 38 , 39 ]. The single-factor analysis, multiple-factor analysis, and mediation effect analysis showed that a high-fat diet during pregnancy had a larger influence on the offspring’s HW/BW.…”

“…Cola1 expression was elevated in the myocardium of mice on a high-fat diet [ 50 ]. Another study indicated that Cola1 expression was abnormal in the tendon tissue of offspring on a high-fat diet [ 38 ]. In combination with the results of the present study, it was likely that a high-fat diet was involved in the regulation and expression of Cola1 , and its specific mechanism deserves further exploration.…”

“…Atp2a2 plays an important role in cardiomyocyte contraction and diastole and cardiac function, and is a key regulator of Ca 2+ cycling in cardiomyocytes; its abnormal expression is closely associated with the changes in myocardial contractility [ 38 , 51 ]. Some previous studies have indicated that myocardial injury was synchronized with alterations in a number of indicators, such as cardiac tissue from Myh6 variant carriers showing significant upregulation of myosin genes, including Actα1 (actin α1), Myl2 (myosin light chain 2), Tnnt2 (cardiac troponin T), and the Myh6 homolog Myh7 heavy chain heterodimer encoding β-myosin [ 52 ].…”

Novel In Vitro Platform for Studying the Cell Response to Healthy and Diseased Tendon Matrices

“…A directionality plugin for the Fiji-ImageJ (Ashburn, VA, USA) was used on AFM-scanned images to perform the 2D fast-Fourier transform analysis for the collagen fiber directionality measurement. 29 The directionality plugin calculates the spatial orientation of the fibers in an image and generates a normalized histogram with the amount of the fiber present between 0 and 180°. A Gaussian distribution is fitted on the generated histogram, calculating the goodness of the fit.…”