Babies born to mothers with a diet high in fat and sugar may be more at risk of developing heart problems and diabetes as adults, according to a recent study on baboons.
Physiologists at the University of South Australia fed pregnant baboons a high-fat, high-sugar diet and then analyzed tissues from the hearts of their babies, comparing the findings to that of babies born to baboons fed a healthy diet.
The researchers found that the unhealthy diet caused damage to babies' hearts, potentially increasing the likelihood of heart disease and diabetes if the babies reached adulthood.
Lead author Melanie Bertossa said in a statement that the findings were significant because they demonstrated a clear link between an unhealthy diet, high in saturated fats and sugar, and poor cardiovascular health.
"There has been a long-standing debate as to whether high-fat diets induce a hyper- or hypothyroid state in the fetal heart," she said. "Our evidence points to the latter."
"We found that a maternal high-fat, high-energy diet reduced concentrations of the active thyroid hormone T3, which acts like a switch around late gestation, telling the fetal heart to start preparing for life after birth. Without this signal, the fetal heart develops differently," she continued.
T3, otherwise known as triiodothyronine, is a crucial thyroid hormone that helps regulate metabolism and heart function, among many other processes in the body.
Bertossa also said that diets high in fat and sugar could alter how well the fetal heart reacted to sugar and insulin, potentially increasing the risk of insulin resistance in the heart, which could lead to diabetes in adulthood.
"You're born with all the heart cells you will ever have," she said. "The heart doesn't make enough new heart muscle cells after birth to repair any damage, so changes that negatively impact these cells before birth could persist for a lifetime."
"These permanent changes could cause a further decline in heart health once children reach adolescence and adulthood when the heart starts to age," Bertossa added.
These changes were found in the babies of baboons that were fed the high-fat, high-sugar diet, even if the babies were born at a normal weight, which Janna Morrison, a professor and senior author in the study, said "should guide future clinical practice."
"Cardiometabolic health screening should be performed on all babies born from these types of pregnancies, not just those born too small or too large, with the goal being to detect heart disease risks earlier," Morrison said in a statement.
She expressed concerns that rising rates of unhealthy diets may cause more people to develop conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.
Morrison added, "Hopefully, with the knowledge we have now about the negative health impacts of obesity, there is potential to change this trajectory."
The paper was published in The Journal of Physiology in August. Scientists at the University of South Australia fed either a high-fat, high-sugar diet or a healthy diet to 24 pregnant baboons in a U.S. research institute and delivered the babies 20 days before full-term by cesarean section.
The baboon babies were humanely killed so the physiologists could study their heart tissues.
The researchers are also undertaking long-term studies of babies born to women on similar diets, with a goal of tracking their health as they grow up.
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Reference
Bertossa, M. R., Darby, J. R. T., Holman, S. L., Meakin, A. S., Li, C., Huber, H. F., Wiese, M. D., Nathanielsz, P. W. & Morrison, J. L. (2024). Maternal high fat–high energy diet alters metabolic factors in the non‐human primate fetal heart. The Journal of Physiology. https://doi.org/10.1113/JP286861
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