Maternal diabetes diet supplemented with or without olive oil differentially impacts pancreas development in male and female offspring

EVANGELINA CAPOBIANCO, ALICIA JAWERBAUM; EDITH ARANY; ELIZABETH PHAM, DANIEL RAMNATH

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Scientific Meeting of the International Association of Diabetes and Pregnancy Study Groups 2016 (IADPSG 2016).; 2016

Maternal type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) impacts fetal development and results in glucose intolerance later in life. Previous research in our laboratory has shown that dietary supplementation with 6% olive oil (enriched with 34% oleic acid) given during pregnancy to mild diabetic rats increased the numbers of implanted embryos and decreased neonatal malformations by reducing the inflammatory intrauterine environment. This was related to the activation of PPARs, a family of nuclear receptors essential for placental development, embryonic stem cell proliferation and implantation. Oleic acid, the main component of olive oil, is a ligand of PPARs and has been shown to lower LDL and total cholesterol levels, and it has beneficial effects in terms of blood sugar control as well as reducing insulin resistance. In this study we examined the effects of maternal diabetes with or without olive oil supplementation on neonatal and adult pancreas development and its impacts in early adulthood. A mild diabetic rat model was used, injecting streptozotocin (STZ) (90 mg/kg) diluted with fresh citrate buffer or citrate buffer alone, 2 days after birth. Females with glycemia than 130 mg/ml were mated with normal male rats and at gestational day 0.5 were fed with control chow diet (D+C) or diet supplemented with 6% olive oil (D+O). A control non-diabetic group fed with (C) and (C+O) was also studied. Male and female body weight, pancreas weight, fasting glycemia and pancreas were collected at day 2 and 4 months of age. Differences in body and pancreas weight between all groups were not statistically significant. However, in males fasting glycemia was higher in the D+C and similar to C in the D+O at 4 months of age. No significant changes were seen in females. Dual immunohistochemistry was performed to detect alpha and beta-cells with the different PPARs in islets and morphometric analysis was carried out to study islet area, beta and alpha cell area, beta cell mass and islet distribution by size. Our data showed that the percentage of islet area, beta and alpha cell area and beta cell mass at day 2 postnatal was not statistically significant between all groups. However, males at 4 months of age showed that olive oil supplementation had a restorative effect on islet and beta cell area, as well as beta cell mass with a significant increase (P