THE IMPACT OF PRENATAL STRESS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF OBESITY

MARIA ROSA GONZALEZ MURANO; YAMILA JUAREZ; ANA MARIA GENARO; ALEJANDRO MERCADO; ADRIANA BURGUEÑO

Congreso; LXII Reunión Científica Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Clínica; 2016

According to the ?fetal programming hypothesis?, prenatal exposure to suboptimal intrauterine conditions could predispose the individual to chronic disease at adult age. Over the past decades, obesity has increased its worldwide prevalence. Therefore identifying the factors that predispose its development is essential. In the present work, we studied the effect of prenatal stress (PS) on the development of obesity. For this purpose pregnant C57BL/6J female mice were stressed during the last week of pregnancy for 2 h daily (from 10 AM to 12) by placing them in a plastic restraining tube. Non-exposed control pregnant females were left undisturbed during all the gestation period (NPS). At 4th week of age, both PS and NPS offspring were fed with one of the following diets: High Fat diet (HFD, 4800kcal/kg) or a standard diet (SD, 3000kcal/kg). After 12 weeks of diet, PS/SD males showed no differences in body weight compared to NPS/SD. Instead, PS/HFD males gained more body weight than the NPS/HFD (p