Pregnant women with fatty, high-caloric diets increase fetal risk for liver disease, obesity, diabetes

Sep 11 2006

Infants born to women who have diets high in calories and fat during pregnancy have an increased risk of developing liver disease, which can lead to obesity and diabetes later in life, Kevin Grove, a researcher at Oregon Health and Science University and the Developmental Obesity Research Consortium, said on Friday at the 10th International Congress on Obesity in Sydney, Australia, Agence France-Presse reports.

Grove said that fat-based liver damage might place infants at an increased risk of certain conditions, including damage to brain circuits that control appetite.

In addition, high calorie diets could "progra[m]" developing brains to "seek out tasty foods that aren't healthy or may make them feel more lethargic, so they won't feel like getting up and working out as much," Grove said.

According to studies conducted among nonhuman primates, fetuses of pregnant primates that were exposed to high-fat diets had higher rates of fat-based liver disease, irregular brain development and resistance to insulin than other fetuses -- even if the pregnant primate was "genetically lean," Grove said.

He added that he plans to investigate whether liver disease among primates can be prevented by feeding pregnant primates healthy diets, which he said "could give obstetricians and pediatricians an immediate clinical application, so they can recommend a specific diet to pregnant women to prevent a lot of these diseases."

According to Agence France-Presse, Swedish researchers last week told the 2,000 delegates at the conference that there was a significant increase in the number of cases of pediatric diabetes worldwide (Agence France-Presse, 9/8).