Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Home
Hostname: page-component-ffbbcc459-2vc98 Total loading time: 0.367 Render date: 2022-03-13T05:48:46.169Z Has data issue: true Feature Flags: { "shouldUseShareProductTool": true, "shouldUseHypothesis": true, "isUnsiloEnabled": true, "useRatesEcommerce": false, "useNewApi": true }
  • English
British Journal of Nutrition British Journal of Nutrition

Article contents

Prenatally undernourished rats show increased preference for wheel running v. lever pressing for food in a choice task

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2008

Jennifer L. Miles ,
Jason Landon ,
Michael Davison ,
Christian U. Krägeloh ,
Nichola M. Thompson ,
Christopher M. Triggs  and
Bernhard H. Breier
Jennifer L. Miles
Affiliation:
National Research Centre for Growth and Development, Auckland, New Zealand Liggins Institute, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand
Jason Landon
Affiliation:
National Research Centre for Growth and Development, Auckland, New Zealand School of Psychology, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
Michael Davison
Affiliation:
National Research Centre for Growth and Development, Auckland, New Zealand Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Christian U. Krägeloh
Affiliation:
National Research Centre for Growth and Development, Auckland, New Zealand School of Psychology, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
Nichola M. Thompson
Affiliation:
National Research Centre for Growth and Development, Auckland, New Zealand Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Christopher M. Triggs
Affiliation:
Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Bernhard H. Breier*
Affiliation:
National Research Centre for Growth and Development, Auckland, New Zealand Liggins Institute, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand
*
*Corresponding author: Dr Bernhard Breier, fax +649 3737497, email bh.breier@auckland.ac.nz
Rights & Permissions[Opens in a new window]

Abstract

HTML view is not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Maternal nutrition during pregnancy has a significant influence in establishing patterns of metabolism and postnatal behaviours in offspring, and therefore shapes their risk of developing disorders in later life. Although it is well established that a mismatch between food consumption and energy expenditure leads to obesity and metabolic dysregulation, little research has investigated the biological origin of such behaviour. We conducted the present experiments to investigate effects of early-life nutrition on preference between wheel running and lever pressing for food during adult life. To address this issue we employed a well-established experimental approach in the rat which has shown that offspring of mothers undernourished during pregnancy develop obesity and metabolic disorders when kept under standard laboratory conditions. Using this experimental approach, two studies were conducted where offspring of ad libitum-fed dams and dams undernourished throughout pregnancy were given the choice between wheel running and pressing a response lever for food. Across subsequent conditions, the rate at which the response lever provided food was varied from 0·22 to 6·0 (study 1) and 0·19 to 3·0 (study 2) pellets per min. Compared with the control group, offspring from dams undernourished during pregnancy showed a consistently greater preference for running over lever pressing for food throughout both experiments of the study. The results of the present study provide experimental evidence that a mother's nutrition during pregnancy can result in a long-term shift in her offspring's lifestyle choices that are relevant to obesity prevention. Such a shift, if endorsed, will have substantial and wide-ranging health consequences throughout the lifespan.

Keywords

Choice behaviourFoodExerciseObesityPrenatal nutrition
Type
Full Papers
Information
British Journal of Nutrition , Volume 101 , Issue 6 , 28 March 2009 , pp. 902 - 908
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2008

References

1Damcott, CM, Sack, P & Shuldiner, AR (2003) The genetics of obesity. Endocrinol Metab Clin North Am 32, 761–786.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
2Jequier, E (2002) Pathways to obesity. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord 26, S12–S17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
3Gluckman, PD & Hanson, MH (2004) Living with the past: evolution, development, and patterns of disease. Science 305, 1733–1736.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4Gluckman, PD, Hanson, MH, Spencer, HG & Bateson, P (2005) Environmental influences during development and their later consequences for health and disease: implications for the interpretation of empirical studies. Proc Biol Sci 272, 671–677.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
5Breier, BH, Krechowec, S & Vickers, MH (2004) Maternal nutrition in pregnancy and adiposity in offspring. In Fetal Nutrition and Adult Disease – Programming of Chronic Disease through Fetal Exposure to Undernutrition, pp. 211–234 [Langley-Evans, SC, editor]. Oxford: CABI Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6Landon, J, Davison, M & Breier, BH (2006) Early life influences on subsequent cognitive function and behaviour. In Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, pp. 370–378 [Gluckman, PD and Hanson, MA, editors]. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7Richards, M, Hardy, R, Kuh, D & Wadsworth, MEJ (2001) Birth weight, and cognitive function in the British 1946 birth cohort: longitudinal population based study. BMJ 322, 199–203.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
8Richards, M, Hardy, R, Kuh, D & Wadsworth, MEJ (2002) Birthweight, postnatal growth and cognitive function in a national UK birth cohort. Int J Epidemiol 31, 342–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9Wolf, C, Almli, CR, Finger, S, Ryan, S & Morgane, PJ (1986) Behavioural effects of severe and moderate early malnutrition. Physiol Behav 38, 725–730.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
10Vickers, MH, Breier, BH, McCarthy, D & Gluckman, PD (2003) Sedentary behaviour during postnatal life is determined by the prenatal environment and exacerbated by postnatal hypercaloric nutrition. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 285, R271–R273.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
11Baum, WM (1974) On the two types of deviations from the matching law: bias and undermatching. J Exp Anal Behav 22, 231–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12Vickers, MH, Breier, BH, Cutfield, WS, Hofman, PL & Gluckman, PD (2000) Fetal origins of hyperphagia, obesity and hypertension and its postnatal amplifications by hypercaloric nutrition. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 279, E83–E87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13Woodall, SM, Breier, BH, Johnston, BM & Gluckman, PD (1996) Chronic maternal undernutrition in the rat leads to delayed postnatal growth and elevated blood pressure of offspring. J Endocrinol 150, 231–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14Krechowec, SO, Vickers, M, Gertler, A & Breier, BH (2006) Prenatal influences on leptin sensitivity and susceptibility to diet-induced obesity. J Endocrinol 189, 355–363.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
15Thompson, NM, Norman, AM, Donkin, SS, Shankar, RR, Vickers, MH, Miles, JL & Breier, BH (2007) Prenatal and postnatal pathways to obesity: different underlying mechanisms, different metabolic outcomes. Endocrinology 148, 2345–2354.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
16Vickers, MH, Reddy, S, Ikenasio, BA & Breier, BH (2001) Dysregulation of the adipoinsular axis – a mechanism for the pathogenesis of hyperleptinemia and adipogenic diabetes induced by fetal programming. J Endocrinol 170, 323–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17Ramos, SD, Lee, JM & Peuler, JD (2001) An inexpensive meter to measure differences in electrical resistance of the rat vagina during the ovarian cycle. J Appl Physiol 91, 667–670.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
18Wright, S (1921) Systems of mating. Genetics 6, 111–178.Google Scholar
19Woodall, SM, Breier, BH, Johnston, BM, Bassett, NS, Barnard, R & Gluckman, PD (1999) Administration of growth hormone or insulin-like growth factor-I to pregnant rats on a reduced diet throughout pregnancy does not prevent fetal IUGR and elevated blood pressure in adult offspring. J Endocrinol 163, 69–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20Woodall, SM, Bassett, NS, Gluckman, PD & Breier, BH (1998) Consequences of maternal undernutrition for fetal and postnatal hepatic insulin-like growth factor-I, growth hormone (GH) receptor and GH binding protein gene regulation in the rat. J Mol Endocrinol 20, 313–326.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
21Vickers, MH, Ikenasio, BA & Breier, BH (2001) Insulin-like growth factor-1 treatment reduces hyperphagia, obesity and hypertension in metabolic disorders induced by fetal programming. Endocrinology 142, 3964–3973.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
22Vickers, MH, Ikenasio, BA & Breier, BH (2002) Adult growth hormone treatment reduces hypertension and obesity induced by an adverse prenatal environment. J Endocrinol 175, 617–623.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
23Vickers, MH, Gluckman, PD, Coveny, AH, Hofman, PL, Cutfield, WS, Gertler, A, Breier, BH & Harris, M (2005) Neonatal leptin treatment reverses developmental programming. Endocrinology 146, 4211–4216.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
24Brown, PL & Jenkins, HM (1968) Auto-shaping of the pigeon's key-peck. J Exp Anal Behav 11, 1–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
25Gelman, A & Hill, J (2007) Data Analysis using Regression Analysis and Multilevel Hierarchical Models. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
26GenStat Committee (2006) GenStat Version 9.2. Hemel Hempstead: VSN International Ltd.Google Scholar
27Breier, BH, Vickers, MH, Ikenasio, BA, Chan, KY & Wong, WP (2001) Fetal programming of appetite and obesity. Mol Cell Endocrinol 185, 73–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
28Huber, K, Miles, JL, Thompson, NM, Norman, AM & Breier, BH (2007) P2-20 Prenatal induction of enhanced metabolic flexibility in skeletal muscle. Early Hum Dev 83, S134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29Landon, J, Davison, M, Krägeloh, C, Thompson, NM, Miles, JL, Vickers, MH, Fraser, M & Breier, BH (2007) Global undernutrition during gestation influences learning during adult life. Learn Behav 35, 79–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
30Tanji, J & Hoshi, E (2007) Role of the lateral prefrontal cortex in executive behavioural control. Physiol Rev 88, 37–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
31Haddon, JE & Killcross, S (2007) Contextual control of choice performance. Ann N Y Acad Sci 1104, 250–269.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
32Wickens, JR, Budd, CS, Hyland, BI & Arbuthnott, GW (2007) Striatal contributions to reward and decision making. Ann N Y Acad Sci 1104, 192–212.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
33Ikenasio-Thorpe, BA, Breier, BH, Vickers, MH & Fraser, M (2007) Prenatal influences on susceptibility to diet-induced obesity are mediated by altered neuroendocrine gene expression. J Endocrinol 193, 31–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
34Tang-Christensen, M, Vrang, N, Ortmann, S, Bidlingmaier, M, Horvath, TL & Tschöp, M (2004) Central administration of ghrelin and agouti-related protein (83–132) increases food intake and decreases spontaneous locomotor activity in rats. Endocrinology 145, 4645–4652.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
35Bayer, SA, Altman, J, Russo, RJ & Zhang, X (1993) Timetables of neurogenesis in the human brain based on experimentally determined patterns in the rat. Neurotoxicology 14, 83–144.Google ScholarPubMed
36Mistlberger, RE, Webb, IC, Simon, MM, Tse, D & Su, C (2006) Effects of food deprivation on locomotor activity, plasma glucose, and circadian clock resetting in Syrian hamsters. J Biol Rhythms 21, 33–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
37Bronzino, JD, Austin La France, RJ, Morgane, PJ & Galler, JR (1996) Diet-induced alterations in the ontogeny of long-term potentiation. Hippocampus 6, 109–117.3.0.CO;2-K>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
You have Access
19
Cited by

Send article to Kindle

To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle.

Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Prenatally undernourished rats show increased preference for wheel running v. lever pressing for food in a choice task
Available formats
×

Send article to Dropbox

To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox.

Prenatally undernourished rats show increased preference for wheel running v. lever pressing for food in a choice task
Available formats
×

Send article to Google Drive

To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive.

Prenatally undernourished rats show increased preference for wheel running v. lever pressing for food in a choice task
Available formats
×
×

Reply to: Submit a response

Please enter your response.

Your details

Please enter a valid email address.

Conflicting interests

Do you have any conflicting interests? *