High-fat diet during lactation, as opposed to during adolescence or gestation, programs cardiometabolic and autonomic dysfunctions in adult offspring

The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) concept has been established for three decades. Many studies have shown that, besides pregnancy, other plastic phases (mainly preconception, lactation, and infancy-adolescence) are also sensitive to environmental changes, including nutritional conditions, that can program health or disease later in life. This study compared the susceptibility of the gestation, lactation and adolescence to a high-fat diet (HFD) intervention to program rats into autonomic nervous system imbalance and cardiometabolic dysfunction in adulthood. Four groups of rats were studied: offspring from mothers exposed to a HFD (35% fat) or a standard chow diet (4.5% fat) during gestation (GEST and CONT groups, respectively), offspring from mothers exposed to the HFD during lactation (LAC), and adolescent rats exposed to the HFD (ADOL). Mothers treated during pregnancy exhibited a higher body mass, but nursing mothers presented the highest food energy intake and higher adiposity. Compared to the other groups, the LAC rats showed increased body mass gain, food energy intake, body fat, glucose intolerance and blood pressure. LAC group also showed increased parasympathetic activity. In contrast, LAC sympathetic nerve activity decreased compared with the other groups. The ADOL group exhibited mostly similar responses but of a smaller magnitude. This suggests that the lactation phase is the most sensitive to HFD programming for cardiometabolic dysfunction in adulthood and that early overnutrition may affect neural connections by altering the autonomic nervous system balance.