Fetal Growth as a Cue of Matrilineal Nutritional History in the Philippines

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

The nutrition that a fetus receives from the mother across the placenta influences not only its rate of growth but also that individual's adult biology, including reproductive function, body size and risk of developing chronic diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease. As more studies demonstrate such long-term effects of intrauterine conditions, this has led to new questions about their function. It has been proposed that these developmental adjustments represent a form of adaptation in which maternal biology sends cues across the placenta that allow the fetus to adjust its metabolism and biology in anticipation of nutrition and other conditions in the postnatal environment. This idea of intergenerational signaling has been demonstrated in other species, but most are short-lived. How such a system might operate in a long-lived species like humans is less clear, because the mother's diet or health during the months of pregnancy may be less representative of typical conditions over the many years or decades that a human offspring will live in that ecology. To clarify the role of fetal nutrition as an ecological nutritional cue, this study will test whether a woman's developmental history of nutrition and growth predict the fetal growth rate of her offspring. This US and Filipino team of researchers will work with a study that originally enrolled 3000+ pregnant women in 1983 and has since collected detailed information on the growth, nutrition, and other characteristics of their offspring as they aged. The original offspring are now reproductive-aged adults having offspring of their own (age 25-26 years), allowing this team to evaluate the intergenerational predictors of fetal nutrition and growth rate using data spanning 3 matrilineal generations. All women (the original female offspring n~900) will be tracked to identify new pregnancies, and information on diet, health and nutritional status will be collected during pregnancy and in their newborns at birth. This will replicate data collected in their mothers when they were infants, and allow identification of which factors in the mother's nutritional history, extending back to the grandmother's pregnancy nutritional status, predict fetal growth rate in their offspring. In addition, birth records will be used to reconstruct birth weight of prior offspring of these women, but also of the spouses of study males, which will provide insights into the relative importance of genetic and developmental factors as influences on fetal growth rate. This study will clarify what information from the mother's nutritional history might be encoded in fetal nutrition and reflected in fetal growth rate. This will help explain the role of fetal developmental plasticity as a mechanism of biological adaptation in humans and will shed light on how these systems might influence later health. By clarifying the ages and types of nutritional and other factors in the mother's developmental past that predict offspring fetal growth rate, this study could also lead to new approaches to maternal nutritional supplementation aimed at improving birth outcomes.