No impact of maternal exercise during pregnancy on rat offspring physical activity and food consumption

Emily Dahl Breslin, Purdue University

Abstract

Both the prenatal environment and postnatal behaviors have been shown to influence the long term health of an individual. The prenatal environment has an even greater lasting effect on the offspring's health once outside the womb by programming postnatal behaviors. To date, factors such as undernutrition, overnutrition and stress have been shown to influence the offspring's postnatal behaviors in a detrimental manner. A preliminary study performed using offspring from either exercise trained or sedentary crossbred swine trended towards having positive postnatal behavioral effects such as decreased food consumption and increased physical activity levels in offspring from the trained group. Therefore, an investigation using a more stringent protocol in a rat model was performed to determine the effects of maternal exercise during pregnancy on an offspring's postnatal activity and food consumption. Nineteen pregnant female Sprague Dawley rats were randomly divided into EX (n=9) or a SED (n=10) groups. The EX dams were allowed voluntary access to freely rotating running wheels, whereas SED dams had access to locked running wheels throughout pregnancy. At weaning, two male (M) and two female (F) offspring from each dam were placed on either a high fat (HF) or normal (N) diet. Wheel running (WR) and food consumption (FC) were measured over a two day period in the offspring at 2, 4, 6, and 8 months of age. Twenty-four hour WR distance was assessed in offspring using a running wheel that was housed within the cage. FC was calculated as a difference in food weight over a 24 hours period and expressed as kilocalories consumed. Neither WR nor FC behavior was significantly different between the offspring from either EX or SED dams at 2, 4, 6, or 8 months of age. In conclusion, these results suggest that maternal exercise during pregnancy does not significantly alter the physical activity or food consumption behaviors of rat offspring throughout their lifespan.

Degree

M.S.

Advisors

Newcomer, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Behavioral psychology|Kinesiology

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