Maternal monosaccharide diets evoke cognitive, locomotor, and emotional disturbances in adolescent and young adult offspring rats

Abstract

Anxiety and depression are the most common mental disorders affecting people worldwide. Recent studies have highlighted that a maternal high-sugar diet (HSD) could be a risk factor for neurobehavioural dysregulations, including mood disorders. Increased consumption of added sugar in food such as refined fructose/glucose can increase the risk of metabolic disorders and impact susceptibility to mental disorders. Furthermore, a few papers have reported disabilities in learning and memory among offspring after maternal HSD, thus suggesting a relationship between maternal nutrition and offspring neurogenesis. In this study, we evaluated the impact of maternal monosaccharide consumption based on a glucose (GLU) or fructose (FRU) diet during pregnancy and lactation in adolescent and young adult offspring rats of both sexes on cognitive, locomotor, and emotional disturbances. Locomotor activity, short-term memory, anxiety-like and depressive-like behavior were evaluated in the offspring. We report for the first time that the maternal GLU or FRU diet is sufficient to evoke anxiety-like behavior among adolescent and young adult offspring. Moreover, we found that maternal monosaccharide diets lead to hyperactivity and depressive-like behavior in male adolescent rats. We also noticed that a maternal FRU diet significantly enhanced novelty-seeking behavior only in young adult male rats. Our novel findings indicated that the maternal monosaccharide diet, especially a diet enriched in FRU, resulted in strong behavioral alterations in offspring rats at early life stages. This study also revealed that male rats were more susceptible to hyperactivity and anxiety- and depressive-like phenotypes than female rats. These results suggest that maternal monosaccharide consumption during pregnancy and lactation is an important factor affecting the emotional status of offspring.

Differential effects of perigestational consumption of sucrose‐sweetened beverages on anxiety and depression‐related behaviors in adult offspring: Sex disparity in a mouse model

“…This study also noted a decrease in climbing behavior in female offspring of mothers with a high fructose diet. In contrast to our findings, Witek et al (2023) reported that male rats were more susceptible to hyperactivity and anxiety-and depressive-like phenotypes than female rats, but this was observed during adolescence rather than early adulthood. It is possible that the changes occurring during adolescence could facilitate neuronal plasticity and reduce the prevalence of behaviors associated with depression and anxiety in the long term.…”