Influence of intergenerational <i>in utero</i> parental energy and nutrient restriction on offspring growth in rural Gambia

Abstract

The prenatal environment can alter an individual's developmental trajectory with long-lasting effects on health. Animal models demonstrate that the impact of the early life environment extends to subsequent generations, but there is a paucity of data from human populations on intergenerational transmission of environmentally induced phenotypes. Here we investigated the association of parental exposure to energy and nutrient restriction <i>in utero</i> on their children's growth in rural Gambia. In a Gambian cohort with infants born between 1972 and 2011, we used multiple regression to test whether parental season of birth predicted offspring birth weight (<i>n</i> = 2097) or length (<i>n</i> = 1172), height-for-age <i>z</i> score (HAZ), weight-for-height <i>z</i> score (WHZ), and weight-for-age <i>z</i> score (WAZ) at 2 yr of age (<i>n</i> = 923). We found that maternal exposure to seasonal energy restriction <i>in utero</i> was associated with reduced offspring birth length (crude:-4.2 mm, <i>P</i> = 0.005; adjusted: -4.0 mm, <i>P</i> = 0.02). In contrast, paternal birth season predicted offspring HAZ at 24 mo (crude: -0.21, <i>P</i> = 0.005; adjusted: -0.22, <i>P</i> = 0.004) but had no discernible impact at birth. Our results indicate that periods of nutritional restriction in a parent's fetal life can have intergenerational consequences in human populations. Fetal growth appears to be under matriline influence, and postnatal growth appears to be under patriline intergenerational influences.-Eriksen, K. G., Radford, E. J., Silver, M. J., Fulford, A. J. C., Wegmüller, R., Prentice, A. M. Influence of intergenerational <i>in utero</i> parental energy and nutrient restriction on offspring growth in rural Gambia.