Maternal obesity impairs hippocampal BDNF production and spatial learning performance in young mouse offspring
Section snippets
Animal maintenance and diets
Four-week-old C57BL/6J female mice were purchased from Clea Japan (Tokyo, Japan) and were kept in a humidity-controlled room with a 12-h light–dark cycle (lights on at 8:00 AM). The animals had ad libitum access to food and water. During non-breeding periods, four to five mice were housed per cage, and during breeding, one female was housed with one male. After acclimation of the animals for 1 week, mice were weight-matched and divided into two groups (n = 50 per group). Mice were fed with either
Development of maternal obesity
Age-matched female mice were fed the ND or the HFD for 6 weeks before breeding, and continued on this diet throughout gestation and lactation as reported previously (Samuelsson et al., 2008, Tozuka et al., 2009a, Kirk et al., 2009). After 6 weeks on the obesogenic diet, the female mice were heavier than controls, at which point they were mated. In our previous study, we reported that HFD-fed dams showed increased body weight and hyperlipidemia at 11 weeks of age (just before the mating)
Discussion
The typical diet in modern human society in the developed world is an energy-rich diet containing high levels of fats and sugars. Chronic consumption of this type of diet has long been associated with adverse effects on brain health and function. There is a great need to elucidate the mechanisms by which this diet can affect neurodevelopment, plasticity and cognitive function. More importantly, it has been documented that maternal diet and metabolic function can affect brain development and
Acknowledgements
We thank Masayuki Sekiguchi (NCNP), Heng Li (NCNP), Daisuke Yamada (NCNP), Hiromi Fujita (NCNP) and Takashi Namba (Nagoya University) for informative discussions and technical assistance. This work was supported in part by grants-in-aid for scientific research from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan; the Program for Promotion of Fundamental Studies in Health Sciences of the National Institute of Biomedical Innovation; and a grant from the Japan Science and Technology Agency.
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