Fetal adaptations to impaired maternoplacental nutrient supply include altered regional blood flow. Whether such responses operate within the normal range of maternal body composition or diet is unknown, but any change in fetal liver perfusion could alter hepatic development, with long-term consequences for the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic disease. In 381 low-risk pregnancies, we found that the fetuses of slimmer mothers with lower body fat stores and those eating an unbalanced diet had greater liver blood flow and shunted less blood away from the liver through the ductus venosus at 36 weeks gestation. Consequences of such "liver-sparing" may underlie the increased cardiovascular risk of people whose mothers were slimmer and had lower body fat stores in pregnancy.T he processes controlling the growth of individual fetal organs are incompletely understood, but during mammalian development, changes in blood flow to an organ affect its growth and can have major lifelong effects on organ function. The fetus uses changes in blood flow to defend itself against an insult such as reduced oxygen availability. By distributing blood pumped by the heart toward essential organs, eg, the brain ("brain-sparing"), at the expense of organs such as muscle, gut and liver, the fetus reduces nonessential growth and economizes on oxygen demand. It is not known whether similar adaptive mechanisms regulate blood flow and growth in relation to fetal nutrient supply within the normal range: if so, such mechanisms may be invoked by maternal factors such as body fat stores and diet, and might in part underlie the link between the intrauterine environment and health in adulthood. 1
Materials and MethodsTo examine the relation between maternal body fatness and diet and fetal hepatic blood flow at 36 weeks gestation, we approached a low-risk population of 410 healthy women with singleton pregnancies and no major fetal abnormality. A study of this size has 90% power to detect a correlation coefficient of 0.16 between maternal body fatness and fetal hepatic blood flow at the 5% level. The women's heights, weights, skinfold thicknesses, mid-upper arm circumferences, and diet had been measured by trained research nurses before pregnancy in the Southampton Women's Survey. 2 We used Doppler ultrasound (Acuson Sequoia) to measure blood flow in the umbilical vein and ductus venosus; the ductus venosus shunts a proportion of well-oxygenated placental blood past the fetal liver, toward the heart and head (Figure 1). We measured internal vessel diameter (late-diastole) and time-averaged maximum velocity (TAMX) (insonation angle Ͻ30°) in the intraabdominal umbilical vein (straight portion, before hepatic parenchymal branches) and at the ductus venosus inlet. Umbilical vein TAMX was obtained during a 3-to 5-second period or, if flow was pulsatile, as the mean during three heart cycles. Ductus venosus TAMX was calculated as the mean during three heart cycles. Blood flow (Q) was calculated as Qϭh ⅐ (D/2) 2 ⅐ ⅐ TAMX, where Dϭvessel diameter (mean of ...