Mom’s pregnancy diet affects her children and grandchildren

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(Credit: Tanya Little/Flickr)

What mom eats during pregnancy dramatically influences not only the health of her kids but future generations as well. That’s the conclusion of a new report in Science linking poor diet among pregnant mice moms to glucose intolerance and pancreatic issues in both mice offspring and grandsons. These symptoms of mouse diabetes were passed on through generations of mice, even without any apparent alterations in the letters that comprise organisms’ genetic codes—A’s, T’s, C’s and G’s.

The study is only the latest research to suggest that environmental factors, such as diet in utero, can fundamentally alter the on-off switches that control the activity of male offspring’s sperm DNA, even when they do not actually cause mutations to the underlying genetic blueprints of the organism. The authors say epigenetics, or how experiences and environment affect the function of genes, are at work here. “Our findings are significant because they demonstrate that your environment when you are in the womb can not only affect your health but also can permanently alter the information that you pass on to your children when they are conceived, and that this affects their health as adults,” says study author Elizabeth Radford, who wrote the paper as an MB/PhD student at the University of Cambridge. The new research builds on earlier work and solidifies the link between epigenetics and these multigenerational health issues.

Read the full, original story: Diet during Pregnancy Linked to Diabetes in Grandchildren

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