The movement of female and parent rats affects the metabolic health of offspring

A mouse study conducted by Kristin Stanford, a researcher in physiology and cell biology at Wexner Medical Center at The Ohio State University School of Medicine, offers new ways to
determine how parental exercise improves the metabolic health of offspring.

The Jocelyn Diabetes Center and Laurie Goodyear of Harvard Medical School co-led the study, which was published on the website
of the journal Diabetes.

The study used mice to assess how their lifestyles — eating high-fat versus healthy foods, exercising vs.
not exercising — affected their offspring's metabolites
.

Metabolites are substances
produced or used when the body breaks down food, drugs, chemicals, or its own fat or muscle tissue.
This process, known as metabolism, produces the energy and substances
needed to grow, reproduce, and stay healthy.
Metabolites act as markers of disease, particularly in type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease
.

"Tissue metabolites contribute to overall metabolism, including glucose or fatty acid metabolism, thereby contributing to systemic metabolism
.
We have previously proven that exercise by parents can improve the health of
offspring.
Tissue and serum metabolites play a vital role in the health of an organism, but how parental motility affects offspring tissues and serum metabolites has not been studied
.
This new data helps explain how parental exercise improves the offspring's metabolism," Stanford said
.

Other studies have linked
the development of type 2 diabetes and impaired metabolic health to poor parental diet.
In this study, researchers investigated the beneficial effects
of parental exercise training on the metabolic health of their offspring in the context of high-fat feeding.

They used targeted metabolomics—the study of metabolites—to determine the effects of maternal movement, paternal movement, and the combination
of maternal and paternal movements on metabolites at the liver, skeletal muscle, and serum levels in offspring.

"We have always been interested
in the role of parental exercise in improving the metabolic health of offspring.
This data is the next step in understanding how it works," said Stanford, a member of
the Dorothy M.
Davis Heart-Lung Institute and the Center for Diabetes and Metabolism Research in Ohio.

This study found that all forms of parental exercise improved systemic glucose metabolism in offspring into adulthood, and metabolomic analysis of the offspring's serum, muscles and liver showed that parental exercise had a broad impact
on all classes of metabolites in all of these offspring tissues.

"Any insight into how these tissue metabolites are regulated could help us understand how tissue metabolism works and provide some ideas
for promoting or improving tissue glucose or fatty acid metabolism.
" This could ultimately lead to the development of new therapeutic tools or targets to improve metabolism," Goodyear said
.

Future studies will elucidate the specific role of exercise in regulating these metabolites and determine their role in improving the health of offspring, particularly in
muscle and liver.

The National Institutes of Health funded the study
.