Effects of Maternal Exercise Modes on Glucose and Lipid Metabolism in Offspring Stem Cells

Context: Maternal exercise positively influences pregnancy outcomes and metabolic health in progeny; however, data regarding the effects of different modes of prenatal exercise on offspring metabolic phenotype is lacking.

Objective: To elucidate the effects of different modes of maternal exercise on offspring umbilical cord derived mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) metabolism.

Design: Randomized controlled trial.

Setting: Clinical research facility.

Patients: Healthy females between 18 and 35 years of age and <16 weeks' gestation.

Intervention: Women were randomized to either 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic, resistance (RE), or combination exercise per week or to a non-exercising control.

Main outcome measures: At delivery, MSCs were isolated from the umbilical cords. MSC glucose and fatty acid(s) metabolism was assessed using radiolabeled substrates.

Results: MSCs from offspring of all the exercising women demonstrated greater partitioning of oleate (P ≤ 0.05) and palmitate (P ≤ 0.05) toward complete oxidation relative to non-exercisers. MSCs from offspring of all exercising mothers also had lower rates of incomplete fatty acid oxidation (P ≤ 0.05), which was related to infant adiposity at 1 month of age. MSCs from all exercising groups exhibited higher insulin-stimulated glycogen synthesis rates (P ≤ 0.05), with RE having the largest effect (P ≤ 0.05). RE also had the greatest effect on MSC glucose oxidation rates (P ≤ 0.05) and partitioning toward complete oxidation (P ≤ 0.05).

Conclusion: Our data demonstrates that maternal exercise enhances glucose and lipid metabolism of offspring MSCs. Improvements in MSC glucose metabolism seem to be the greatest with maternal RE. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03838146.