Rowett Research
Services

 Obesity and Metabolic Health Programme
 - Early Life Nutrition Group

  Head of Group: Dr. Jacqueline Wallace

Research Goals

• To investigate how maternal nutrition influences fetal nutrient supply, growth, body composition and metabolism during prenatal life, with particular emphasis on nutritionally vulnerable adolescent pregnancies.

• To establish how early life nutrition (over and under supply, and varying macronutrient composition during the fetal and early neonatal periods) influences post-natal growth, body composition, hypothalamic energy balance regulation and metabolic health.

• To establish a sound scientific evidence base for dietary advice during pregnancy and early childhood, which is applicable to all women of childbearing age and aimed at optimal lifetime metabolic health.

There is epidemiological evidence that both over and under supply of nutrients during the fetal and neonatal periods have the potential to influence not only the immediate survival but also the long term health of the individual. For example, women with a high pre-pregnancy BMI and/or excessive weight gain during pregnancy exhibit a number of negative outcomes including fetal macrosomia, stillbirth and premature delivery. High birth weight is in turn associated with an increased risk of obesity in later life. At the other end of the birth weight spectrum, low birth weight and prematurity are major causes of infant mortality and morbidity. Women at risk of producing a low birth weight infant include those with short inter-pregnancy intervals, low pre-pregnancy weight, insufficient weight gain during pregnancy, multi-fetal pregnancy and those conceiving at a young maternal age. Appropriate dietary advice is essential for ensuring an appropriate pregnancy outcome in these nutritionally vulnerable groups. Furthermore, low birth weight, even within the normal range is associated with the subsequent development of metabolic syndrome and its co-morbidities. Recent data also suggest that the relationships between birth weight and subsequent health are exacerbated post-natally by the rate of catch up growth, poor quality diets and increasingly sedentary lifestyles.

Together, these human studies suggest that the prevention of metabolic syndrome should begin in utero and continue throughout the life course. As mothers are more likely to comply with dietary advice during pregnancy and early childhood than at any other stage of the life cycle, it is imperative that a sound scientific basis for such dietary advice is established. Establishing cause and effect of the route to compromised metabolic health and whether or not the predicted adverse effects can be prevented and/or reversed is clearly unethical in human pregnancies. Thus we have developed a range of animal models to replicate several of the key features of compromised human pregnancies. These models and the aims of the individual research programmes are detailed in the subsequent pages.

Areas of Research within the Early Life Nutrition Group