Early-life nutrition and metabolic disorders in later life: a new perspective on energy metabolism

Abstract

Type 2 diabetes mellitus and metabolic disorders have become an epidemic globally. However, the pathogenesis remains largely unclear and the prevention and treatment are still limited. In addition to environmental factors during adulthood, early life is the critical developmental window with high tissue plasticity, which might be modified by external environmental cues. Substantial evidence has demonstrated the vital role of early-life nutrition in programming the metabolic disorders in later life. In this review, we aim to overview the concepts of fetal programming and investigate the effects of early-life nutrition on energy metabolism in later life and the potential epigenetic mechanism. The related studies published on PubMed database up to March 2020 were included. The results showed that both maternal overnutrition and undernutrition increased the riskes of metabolic disorders in offspring and epigenetic modifications, including DNA methylation, miRNAs, and histone modification, might be the vital mediators. The beneficial effects of early-life lifestyle modifications as well as dietary and nutritional interventions on these deleterious metabolic remolding were initially observed. Overall, characterizing the early-life malnutrition that reshapes metabolic disease trajectories may yield novel targets for early prevention and intervention and provide a new point of view to the energy metabolism.

Gestation Food Restriction and Refeeding Compensate Maternal Energy Status and Alleviate Metabolic Consequences in Juvenile Offspring in a Rabbit Model

“…Such controversy could be explained because lipid metabolism appears early in the development of undernourished male fetuses [73]. Sex specificity of metabolic outcomes is a common finding in the literature [5,25]. However, in the current work undernutrition did not result in sex-specific changes in body and organ weights, morphometric parameters, body composition, and only some metabolic parameters were affected in the fetal period.…”

“…This situation is associated with a high prevalence of chronic diseases in later life [22], such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, etc. [23,24], which has been considered as a global epidemic [25]. In addition, livestock animals show undernutrition commonly during gestation and some productive features can be also compromised as viability, growth, body composition, or metabolism (reviewed in [26]).…”

Effects of Maternal Resveratrol Intake on the Metabolic Health of the Offspring

“…In support of the developmental origins of health and disease theory, animal models and human studies have demonstrated that early environmental influences, including nutritional factors, can affect adult metabolic homeostasis [ 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 ]. Indeed, unbalanced nutrition during pregnancy and lactation has been shown to induce both short- and long-term effects on the metabolic health of the child, including an increased risk of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease [ 36 , 38 ].…”

“…Famine is a natural model for investigating the effects of an early-life poor nutritional environment on energy homeostasis in later life. One well known example of this is the Dutch winter famine (1944–1945) where maternal undernutrition during pregnancy was associated with higher prevalence of diabetes and disorders of lipid profiles, glucose intolerance and insulin resistance in adult offspring aged 50–59, with the outcome depending on both the gestational period when exposed to famine and the offspring’s sex [ 35 , 50 , 51 ]. For example, Lumey et al, found an association between maternal undernutrition and increased total cholesterol and triglycerides, but only in females [ 51 ].…”

“…The beneficial effects of specific dietary bioactive compounds such as resveratrol on energy metabolism during postnatal life have been reported by different authors [ 24 , 35 , 56 , 57 ]. For example, Franco et al showed that resveratrol (30 mg/kg/d), administered from 150 PND to 180 PND, reduced the increase in body weight, hyperphagia, visceral obesity, hyperleptinemia, hyperglycemia, insulin resistance and hypoadiponectinemia induced by an experimental model of early weaning in rats [ 18 ].…”