The researchers found in mice that a high-fat diet during pregnancy prevented offspring from developing Alzheimer's disease.

　It is well known
high
diet
health risks, but for mothers-to-be, the situation may be completely different. A high-fat diet may help prevent Alzheimer's disease in
offspring
, according to a recent study published in The Journal.
For the first time, a team at the Lewis Katz
Institute of Medicine
at
Times University in the United States has confirmed through
Animals
that a mother's high intake of fat during pregnancy can prevent certain changes in the brains of future generations, which are characteristic of late-onset Alzheimer's disease."We know that for humans, if a person's mother develops Alzheimer's after the age of 65, his risk of developing the disease increases at the same age," said Domenico Pratic,
's research director, director of the Alzheimer's Research Center at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at The University of Tamp, chairman of the Scott Richards Polaris Alzheimer's Research Foundation and professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Microbiology. The
explanation behind this phenomenon seems to be the genetic factors passed from mother to offspring, but so far no gene has been able to explain that mother's Alzheimer's disease is passed on to offspring. This fact suggests that environmental factors such as lifestyle and diet during pregnancy may significantly affect the risk of future generations developing the disease.
diet as a risk factor is of particular concern, especially diets rich in fat and cholesterol. Previous studies have shown that high fat intake in young/adult mice directly exacerbates changes in brain function that can eventually lead to Alzheimer's disease.
to better understand the unique relationship between a mother's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and the risk of developing the disease in her offspring, Dr. Pratic's team analyzed fat intake in female mice during pregnancy. The study used a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease. Pregnant mice were fed a high-fat diet from the beginning to the end of pregnancy. When the offspring were born, the mother mice returned to the regular diet and maintained this diet throughout the lactation period. The offspring of these mice adopted the same diet throughout their lives.
when offspring reach 11 months of life, they are tested for behavior to assess their learning and memory abilities. "Surprisingly, we found that the offspring of female mice fed a high-fat diet during pregnancy performed better in learning and memory than those who fed regular drinks," Dr Pratic said. After
they observed that this improvement was associated with good synactic integrity. In fact, the offspring of mothers and mice on a high-fat diet showed significant improvements in synactic function compared to those of the conventional diet. Synapses are places where neurons connect and transmit information, and they play a vital role in learning and memory formation.
In addition, there are fewer beta-amyloid proteins in the brains of mothers and mice who were fed a high-fat diet during pregnancy, an abnormal protein that accumulates in neurons that causes abnormal nerve cell function and ultimately significantly impairs memory and learning.
When the team began looking for potential mechanisms that led to this beneficial effect, they found that offspring who fed high-fat diet mice showed reduced levels of three important genes associated with Alzheimer's disease: beta-secretase, tau, and pathological tau protein regulatory gene CDK5 (cell cycle protein-dependent kinase 5, Cyclin-dependent Kinase 5). The team found that the three genes were turned off early in mouse development because a high-fat diet increased the activity of the FOXP2 (forkhead box P2 gene, Forkhead box p2) protein. They confirmed that FOXP2's inhibition of these three genes ultimately prevents brain function in future generations from declining and prevents Alzheimer's disease.
, said: "Our study suggests that effective prevention of Alzheimer's may start during pregnancy. At this particular stage of life, diet may have serious but underestimated long-term effects on brain health. Link
paper:
.