Diets high in fat even negatively affect their great-grandchildren «kleinzeitung.at

If a mother feeds on fat, it could even affect the health of her great-grandchildren. The research results of ETH Zurich are based on a study in mice.

12.25 pm, 02 November 2018

Mothers' eating habits affect not only their children and grandchildren, but also their great-grandchildren. This is the result of a new research project of ETH Zurich with colleagues from Cambridge and Basel. Scientists fed female mice with high-fat foods for nine weeks. Before mating, during pregnancy and during lactation. Their male offspring were then mated to females fed standard laboratory nutrition. The male offspring of these mice were again mated to females fed standard laboratory nutrition.

The result: obesity and addictive behavior

The grandchildren of the fat-rich mice showed addictive behaviors and obesity characteristics. At the same time, changes in metabolism could be detected. In the offspring of the third generation, the great-grandchildren, the researchers found differences between men and women: while women exhibited addictive behavior, men showed signs of obesity.

Research in detail

To evaluate the metabolic characteristics of obesity, second- and third-generation researchers measured their body weight, their energy metabolism, their lipid metabolism, and their plasma parameters such as insulin and cholesterol. In behavioral experiments, they also investigated whether mice preferred particularly nutritious foods, ie a high-fat diet, compared to a standard diet or a sugar-free solution. # 39; water. They also observed that mice responded better to drugs such as alcohol and amphetamines. These results compared them to those of a control group in which none of the ancestors was obese.

Results of mouse to human transmissible?

"The results of our study on mice certainly can not be translated one by one in humans," he says. Daria Peleg-Raibstein, the last author of the study, states. But it is virtually impossible to study such long-term consequences of overeating in humans. There are too many confounders. "The mouse model allowed us to study the effects of a high-fat diet on future generations without these factors," says the expert. "In later studies, we want to know what molecular transfer mechanisms might be responsible for these long-term consequences for future generations."