Swimming exercise before and during pregnancy: Promising preventive approach to impact offspring's health

Abstract

Several environmental factors affect child development, such as the intrauterine environment during the embryonic and fetal development and early postnatal environment provided by maternal behavior. Although mechanistic effects of maternal exercise on offspring health improvement are not yet completely understood, the number of reports published demonstrating the positive influence of maternal exercise have increase. Herein, we addressed issues related to early postnatal environment provided by maternal behavior and early developmental physical landmarks, sensorimotor reflexes, and motor movements ontogeny. In brief, adult female rats underwent involuntary swimming exercise, in a moderated intensity, one week before mating and throughout pregnancy, 30 min a day, 5 days a week. Maternal exercised dams have unchanged gestational outcomes compared to sedentary dams. We found no differences concerning the frequency of pup-directed behavior displayed by dams. However, sedentary dams displayed a poorer pattern of maternal care quality during dark cycle than exercised dams. Physical landmarks and sensorimotor reflexes development of female and male littermates did not differ between maternal groups. Developmental motor parameters such as immobility, lateral head movements, head elevation, pivoting, rearing with forelimb support and crawling frequencies did not differ between groups. Pups born to exercised dams presented higher frequency of walking and rearing on the hind legs. These data suggest that female and male littermates of exercised group present a high frequency of exploratory behavior over sedentary littermates. Taken together, the present findings reinforce that maternal exercise throughout pregnancy represent a window of opportunity to improve offspring's postnatal health.

Influence of the maternal high-intensity-interval-training on the cardiac Sirt6 and lipid profile of the adult male offspring in rats

“…Maternal exercise during pregnancy as a positive maternal behavior has been extensively investigated [20][21][22][23]. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of physical activity of mothers as a healthy lifestyle on the health of offspring.…”

Early weaning alters redox status in the hippocampus and hypothalamus of rat pups

“…The concept of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease research (DOHaD) defines that health and disease risk development in the next generations is affected by parental environmental milieu. In this context, we and other groups have shown that events occurring during the development period may positively or negatively influence health throughout life (Agosti, Tandoi, Morlacchi, & Bossi, 2017; August et al., 2018; Klein et al., 2018; Langley‐Evans, 2015).…”

Sex-dependent metabolic effects of pregestational exercise on prenatally stressed mice

“…Similarly, Klein et al demonstrated that swimming before gestation does not affect the body weight of pregnant female rats. 34 Although swimming has been used as a stressor in repeated variable stress paradigms, 35,36 studies have also shown its use as a form of exercise, demonstrating positive neural adaptations, in addition to decreasing corticosterone levels. 37,38 There is also evidence that mothers who perform physical activities from the beginning of the gestation period and then decrease the exercise levels closer to birth generate significantly heavier children, probably due to the increase in the body fat percentage.…”