Perinatal undernutrition stimulates seeking food reward

Abstract

Experiments in animals have revealed that perinatal nutritional restriction, which manifests in adulthood, increases food intake and preference for palatable foods. Considering this, we aimed to evaluate the effects of perinatal malnutrition on hedonic control of feeding behavior. In this study, we divided Wistar rats into two groups according to the diet provided to their mothers during pregnancy and lactation: the control group (diet with 17% casein) and low-protein group (diet with 8% casein). We assessed the animals' motivational behavior in adulthood by giving them a stimulus of food reward. We also assessed their neuronal activation triggered by the stimulus of palatable food using FOS protein labeling of neurons activated in the caudate putamen, paraventricular, dorsomedial, ventromedial, and lateral hypothalamic nuclei and amygdala. Evaluation of body weight in malnourished animals showed reduction from the 6th day of life until adulthood. Analysis of feeding behavior revealed that these animals were more motivated by food reward, but they had delays during learning of the task. This finding correlated with the number of c-FOS-immunoreactive neurons, which indicated that malnourished animals had an increase in the number of neurons activated in response to the palatable diet, especially in the amygdala and caudate putamen. The study therefore confirmed our hypothesis that early nutritional insults promote changes in encephalic control mechanisms, especially those related to food intake and search for reward.

Perinatal malnutrition stimulates motivation through reward and enhances drd1a receptor expression in the ventral striatum of adult mice

“…This study shows that animals that were subjected to protein perinatal malnutrition showed a body weight reduction in relation to control animals. These data are consistent with those of other studies (Remmers et al, 2008;Orozco-Solis et al, 2009;da Silva et al, 2013). The most frequent cause of body variation in weight in the early periods of life is the maternal nutritional contribution during the gestation and lactation periods (Page et al, 2009).…”

“…At 70 days of age, rats in both the control and undernourished groups underwent a runway task incentive test (Silveira et al, 2010;da Silva et al, 2013). This test assesses the motivation of the animals Table 1 Composition of macronutrients of the diet and period handling.…”

“…Nutritional insult in early life is harmful to hippocampus formation, and the hippocampus contains neurons that perform an essential role in learning and memory processes (Morgane et al, 2002;Matos et al, 2011) and motivational processes, particularly those related to food and feeding behavior control (Tracy et al, 2001). The protocol used in this study allowed for the verification of animal motivation for the reward stimulus (Pecina et al, 2003;da Silva et al, 2013). Perinatal malnutrition did not show any effect on latency time for exiting the initial box or for the time to reach the intended box; nevertheless, it induced a longer time to start reward consumption during the adaptation sessions.…”

Exercise as an intervention to improve metabolic outcomes after intrauterine growth restriction

“…This model may be more reflective of poor quality maternal diets occurring in developing countries rather than IUGR in developed countries, where placental dysfunction is the major cause of IUGR (47). Exposure to a low protein diet throughout perinatal life appears to induce mild and variable effects on fetal growth, with none or 20% decrease in birth weight reported in various studies, and does not reduce litter size (3,20,30,64,65). Glucose homeostasis is impaired in progeny, at least in adult males, which have mildly elevated fasting glucose and impaired glucose tolerance (Supplementary Table S1).…”

“…Severe maternal global nutrient restriction throughout pregnancy is followed by catch-up growth in some, but not all studies (84,130,141,144), and these progeny also exhibit increased adiposity (130,141,144), possibly due to increased appetite (75, 140 -142, 144). Maternal dietary protein restriction throughout gestation and lactation reduces body weight of male progeny into adulthood (3,20,25,26,30), but there is some evidence of altered hypothalamic control and increased appetite (20), so these animals may become fat if studied into later life. Prevention of neonatal catch-up growth may protect against increased visceral fatness after IUGR, as extending moderate maternal global nutrient restriction from late pregnancy throughout lactation results in progeny that not only remain smaller as adults (21,70,129) but are leaner than control animals and resistant to developing obesity when fed a high-fat diet (21,37,129).…”