Children Born To Obese Mothers More Prone To Diabetes: Exercise During Pregnancy Can Lower The Risk

Exercise during pregnancy can improve the offspring's metabolic health, even when the mother is obese or on a high-fat diet, says new study.

Being overweight or obese is a known risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately, obesity is on the rise, and type 2 diabetes is expected to affect 630 million people by 2045. What can be done to reduce the burden of obesity and type 2 diabetes? Here, women can play an important role.

Joji Kusuyama from Tohoku University's Interdisciplinary Institute for Frontier Sciences (FRIS) said that the risk of diabetes is passed down from generation to generation. Studies have also shown that children born to obese mothers or mothers with type 2 diabetes are prone to developing diabetes, despite following a healthy lifestyle. Concerningly, maternal obesity is on the rise. More than 30 per cent of women of childbearing age in Western and Asian countries are classified as obese.

"Stopping this cycle is a critical and pressing medical problem," said Kusuyama, as quoted by Science Daily.

How to tackle this worrying trend? A research group including Kusuyama has demonstrated that exercise during pregnancy can reduce the risk of type-2 diabetes in offspring.

Benefits of exercise during pregnancy

Exercise during pregnancy is beneficial for both the mother and the child. According to the new study published in the Journal Diabetes, maternal exercise during pregnancy induces the placenta to secrete a key protein SOD3, which helps boost the metabolic health of the offspring, resulting in a lowered risk of diabetes.

The researchers also uncovered how SOD3, which stands for supuroexide dismutase 3, prevents the negative effects of obesity being passed from mother to the offspring. They found that it inhibited high-fat diet-induced abnormalities in the offspring's glucose metabolism.

Based on these findings, the researchers believe that the key protein SOD3 released by the placenta after exercise is pivotal for the offspring's metabolic wellbeing.

In conclusion, the study suggested that exercise during pregnancy can reverse the harmful effects of a maternal high-fat diet on an offspring's metabolism, and thus help reverse the alarming rates of obesity and type-2 diabetes.

However, they cautioned that as their study is at the preclinical stage, its applicability to humans requires further studies.