Grant: Team Grant: DOHaD - Implications for Men, Women, Boys and Girls

Maternal obesity and/or excess gestational weight gain are primary risk factors for childhood obesity and metabolic compromise, perpetuating a feed forward cycle of chronic disease risk for future generations. In this program we ask, how is it that exposure to an obesogenic environment in utero gives rise to children that are destined to become obese, and what are the signalling pathways? Excess adipose is associated with chronic inflammation, which has been implicated in many chronic diseases such as diabetes. It is also associated with significant changes in gut health; where changes in the composition of intestinal bacterial communities are associated with inflammation in metabolic tissues. We hypothesize that similarly, during pregnancy, excess adiposity changes the bacterial populations in a mothers gut and that these changes could cause placental inflammation modifying placental and/or fetal development, predisposing offspring to obesity and chronic disease. In this integrative multidisciplinary program we will evaluate basic biological pathways that regulate gut health and immunity in pregnancy, and whether these pathways are impaired in pregnancies characterized by excess adiposity. We will use both animal models to understand molecular mechanisms and human studies to investigate relationships between adiposity, pregnancy weight gain and the maternal gut bacteria to uncover novel pathways that mediate the early origins of childhood obesity. We will take our data, and translate it into an informative community-based, fully-developed, intervention program to support diet and lifestyle improvements in women before and during pregnancy, with a special focus on high risk populations.