Adult exercise effects on oxidative stress and reproductive programming in male offspring of obese rats

Abstract

Santos M, Rodríguez-González GL, Ibáñez C, Vega CC, Nathanielsz PW, Zambrano E. Adult exercise effects on oxidative stress and reproductive programming in male offspring of obese rats. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 308: R219 -R225, 2015. First published December 10, 2014 doi:10.1152/ajpregu.00398.2014.-Exercise improves health but few data are available regarding benefits of exercise in offspring exposed to developmental programming. There is currently a worldwide epidemic of obesity. Obesity in pregnant women predisposes offspring to obesity. Maternal obesity has well documented effects on offspring reproduction. Few studies address ability of offspring exercise to reduce adverse outcomes. We observed increased oxidative stress and impaired sperm function in rat offspring of obese mothers. We hypothesized that regular offspring exercise reverses adverse effects of maternal obesity on offspring sperm quality and fertility. Female Wistar rats ate chow (C) or high-energy, obesogenic diet (MO) from weaning through lactation, bred at postnatal day (PND) 120, and ate their pregnancy diet until weaning. All offspring ate C diet from weaning. Five male offspring (different litters) ran on a wheel for 15 min, 5 times/week from PND 330 to 450 and were euthanized at PND 450. Average distance run per session was lower in MO offspring who had higher body weight, adiposity index, and gonadal fat and showed increases in testicular oxidative stress biomarkers. Sperm from MO offspring had reduced antioxidant enzyme activity, lower sperm quality, and fertility. Exercise in MO offspring decreased testicular oxidative stress, increased sperm antioxidant activity and sperm quality, and improved fertility. Exercise intervention has beneficial effects on adiposity index, gonadal fat, oxidative stress markers, sperm quality, and fertility. Thus regular physical exercise in male MO offspring recuperates key male reproductive functions even at advanced age: it's never too late. developmental programming; oxidative stress; interventions; fertility.EXERCISE IS WELL KNOWN to improve health (7, 43). Programming by adverse conditions during development is now well accepted as a major determinant of offspring life-course health. Developmental programming can be defined as the response to a specific challenge to the mammalian organism during a critical developmental time window that changes the trajectory of growth altering phenotype with resulting effects on health that can persist throughout life (14, 57). Developmental effects of suboptimal maternal nutrition have been extensively investigated (15, 28, 44) including programming resulting from maternal obesity (50).The incidence of obesity has increased substantially worldwide over recent years and obesity is now recognized as a major, universal health problem by organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) (53) with over 1.1 billion individuals throughout the world classified as obese (37). Increased prevalence of obesity is also reflected among women of reproductive...

The Association between High Fat Diet around Gestation and Metabolic Syndrome-related Phenotypes in Rats: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…67 a,b WM, Flard141PPPFAT, BWRodríguez-González G.L. 2015 a,b 68 WMlard141YA, AFAT, BWZambrano E. 69 WMlard141YAFAT, BW, LEP, GLU, INSSantos M. 70 WMlard141AFAT, BWZhang X. 71 SDMlard42YATGPage K.C.…”

Maternal obesity accelerates rat offspring metabolic ageing in a sex‐dependent manner

“…, ; Santos et al . ; Zambrano et al . ), which represents approximately 50% of the life course of CF 1 .…”

“…PND 110 represents the young adult and was chosen to enable comparisons with our paper on RNASeq in programming, addressing mechanisms of MO programming of the liver at 110 days (Lomas-Soria et al 2018). PND 450 represents a mature adult and we have also published programming outcomes at this age (Rodriguez-Gonzalez et al 2014, 2015Santos et al 2015;Zambrano et al 2015), which represents approximately 50% of the life course of CF 1 . Thus, the period studied represents 75% of the normal life course.…”

Hippocampal mechanisms in impaired spatial learning and memory in male offspring of rats fed a low‐protein isocaloric diet in pregnancy and/or lactation

“…Developmental programming is defined as “The response to a specific challenge to the mammalian organism during a critical developmental time window that alters the trajectory of development with resulting effects on health that persist throughout life” (Zambrano & Nathanielsz, ). Fetal and neonatal exposure to various maternal challenges, such as hypoxia (Giussani & Davidge, ), suboptimal maternal nutrition (Langley‐Evans, ), and maternal obesity and over nutrition (Nathanielsz et al, ; Rodriguez‐Gonzalez et al, ; Santos et al, ; Taylor, Samuelsson, & Poston, ; Vega et al, ; Zambrano & Nathanielsz, ) alter offspring phenotype as a result of epigenetic gene/environment interactions (Hanson & Gluckman, ; Peter et al, ). Reduced maternal nutrition is the most extensively studied programming challenge of phenotypic plasticity (Cripps et al, ; Fernandez‐Twinn et al, ; Pinheiro, Salvucci, Aguila, & Mandarim‐de‐Lacerda, ; Qasem, Li, Tang, Pontiggia, & D'mello, ; Rodriguez‐Gonzalez et al, ; Vega et al, ).…”