Diet before pregnancy affects daughter’s ovaries

A MOTHER’S pre-pregnancy diet could reprogram ovarian development of their daughters in utero, according to Monash University researchers.

Dr Winship said more study is needed to better inform prospective parents about how their lifestyle affected their offspring. Picture: iStock

A MOTHER’S pre-pregnancy diet may influence how easily her own daughter can get pregnant, after preclinical studies by Melbourne researchers showed maternal nutrition could reprogram ovarian development of their daughters in utero.

Findings from the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute study add growing weight to the importance of lifestyle factors for both partners before conception, being able to shape everything from the mental health, chronic disease risk and weight of the offspring, beyond the scope of inherited genes.

Dr Amy Winship, who presented her findings at the Ritchie Centre Colloquium, said previous studies had shown that low-protein diets more severely influenced ovary development than high-fat diets, suggesting it was protein itself and not just calories that were important for growth and development of the foetus.

“There is something about protein that can influence the mother’s egg, and it’s probably passed through the placenta directly to influence the baby’s development as well,” Dr Winship said.

The research adds growing weight to the importance of lifestyle factors before conception, including diet.

The Monash University researchers compared the effects of a control diet with a low-protein diet of 8 per cent, given to mice for 4-5 ovulation cycles before mating.

Mice were kept on these diet during pregnancy and lactation.

They looked at the ovaries of three-month-old female mice pups — the equivalent of puberty — and found that those born to females on a low protein diet had half the number of ovarian follicles, which are the precursors to mature eggs.

Further, the energy powerhouses in ovarian cells, the mitochondria, were compromised in mothers on a low protein diet and their offspring.

They are now analysing results looking at the eggs in mice once they reached adulthood.

“What we found was quite alarming,” Dr Winship said.

“Women are born with all the eggs they will ever have throughout their fertile lifespan, so the in-utero development period is the crucial time when the number of oocytes are determined.”

The findings come amid an era where 20 per cent of Australian women are now having their first child after the age of 35 — amid a time when fertility drops, and miscarriage and birth defect risk increase due to reduced egg quality.

Dr Winship said while her research was at too early a stage to influence dietary recommendations, more research was needed to better inform prospective parents about how their lifestyle affected their offspring.

“There are set guidelines for diets of women during pregnancy and lactation, but there is nothing to advise women on how important the preconception period is,” she said.