Developmental Programming in Animal Models: Critical Evidence of Current Environmental Negative Changes

Abstract

The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) approach answers questions surrounding the early events suffered by the mother during reproductive stages that can either partially or permanently influence the developmental programming of children, predisposing them to be either healthy or exhibit negative health outcomes in adulthood. Globally, vulnerable populations tend to present high obesity rates, including among school-age children and women of reproductive age. In addition, adults suffer from high rates of diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular, and other metabolic diseases. The increase in metabolic outcomes has been associated with the combination of maternal womb conditions and adult lifestylerelated factors such as malnutrition and obesity, smoking habits, and alcoholism. However, to date, "new environmental changes" have recently been considered negative factors of development, such as maternal sedentary lifestyle, lack of maternal attachment during lactation, overcrowding, smog, overurbanization, industrialization, noise pollution, and psychosocial stress experienced during the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Therefore, it is important to recognize how all these factors impact offspring development during pregnancy and lactation, a period in which the subject cannot protect itself from these mechanisms. This review aims to introduce the importance of studying DOHaD, discuss classical programming studies, and address the importance of studying new emerging programming mechanisms, known as actual lifestyle factors, during pregnancy and lactation.

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“…Several mechanisms underlying fetal programming have been examined in preclinical, e.g. [121,122] and human perinatal stress research. We refer to [73 ▪▪ ,123] for recent overviews.…”

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“…For example, dietary factors during pregnancy, such as overnutrition or malnutrition, severely affect the risk of the offspring developing a metabolic disease or CVD during later life [ [527] , [528] , [529] ]. This also holds true for noise pollution, which affects the risk of disease in human and animal offspring via prenatal epigenetic reprogramming [ 530 ].…”

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