Grant: Environments, Genes and Chronic Disease

Obesity is the fastest growing chronic illness in Canada, not only among adult men and women, but also in pregnant women and children. Pre-pregnancy obesity is a factor that increases the likelihood that a woman will develop diabetes during pregnancy. In turn, exposure to diabetes during pregnancy influences the risk for obesity development in children, according to recent findings. Our understanding of how a mother's diabetes during pregnancy influences the development of obesity in children is incomplete. We plan to study populations of children and their mothers in combination with rodent models of diabetes during pregnancy, to determine how the maternal environment influences the development of obesity in their children. Our research aims to identify new biomarkers of obesity risk that could be used to prevent the extensive health and financial burden of obesity in children and future generations.