Open AccessEarly-life nutrition and metabolic disorders in later life: a new perspective on energy metabolism
Author(s) -
Liyuan Zhou,
Mingqun Deng,
Qian Zhang,
Xinhua Xiao
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
chinese medical journal/chinese medical journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.537
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 2542-5641
pISSN - 0366-6999
DOI - 10.1097/cm9.0000000000000976
Subject(s) - overnutrition , malnutrition , epigenetics , offspring , mechanism (biology) , disease , biology , bioinformatics , medicine , physiology , gerontology , pregnancy , genetics , philosophy , epistemology , gene
Type 2 diabetes mellitus and metabolic disorders have become an epidemic globally. However, the pathogenesis remains largely unclear and the prevention and treatment are still limited. In addition to environmental factors during adulthood, early life is the critical developmental window with high tissue plasticity, which might be modified by external environmental cues. Substantial evidence has demonstrated the vital role of early-life nutrition in programming the metabolic disorders in later life. In this review, we aim to overview the concepts of fetal programming and investigate the effects of early-life nutrition on energy metabolism in later life and the potential epigenetic mechanism. The related studies published on PubMed database up to March 2020 were included. The results showed that both maternal overnutrition and undernutrition increased the riskes of metabolic disorders in offspring and epigenetic modifications, including DNA methylation, miRNAs, and histone modification, might be the vital mediators. The beneficial effects of early-life lifestyle modifications as well as dietary and nutritional interventions on these deleterious metabolic remolding were initially observed. Overall, characterizing the early-life malnutrition that reshapes metabolic disease trajectories may yield novel targets for early prevention and intervention and provide a new point of view to the energy metabolism.