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Early Infant Nutrition and Metabolic Programming: What Are the Potential Molecular Mechanisms?

  • Prenatal, Neonatal, and Maternal Nutrition (DK Tobias and M-F Hivert, Section Editors)
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Abstract

The developmental origins of health and disease hypothesis contend that fetal and early postnatal environmental factors, in particular nutrition, influence long-term health in offspring. Accumulating evidence in humans show that fetal under- and over-nutrition induce long-term changes in gene expression and influence phenotypes in the offspring through epigenetic modifications. As such, epigenetics has received important attention for its potential role in health and disease programming. However, much less is known regarding the mechanisms underlying early postnatal nutrition programming of long-term health. Breast milk is known to be the best source of nutrition for infants. It contains many bioactive constituents that are able to induce changes in DNA methylation pattern. This review will present potential molecular mechanisms through which early postnatal nutrition may influence health and disease programming, focusing on research that used “-omics” approaches (i.e., epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics).

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Acknowledgments

SMR is recipient of a postdoctoral fellowship from the Canadian Diabetes Association (CDA). LB and MFH are junior research scholars from the Fonds de la Recherche du Québec - Santé (FRQ-S). MFH has received a Clinical Scientist Award by the CDA and the Maud Menten Award from the Institute of Genetics–Canadian Institute of Health Research. L.B. is a member of the FRSQ-funded Centre de recherche du Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke.

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Conflict of Interest

Stephanie-May Ruchat, Luigi Bouchard, and Marie-France Hivert declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

All studies by the authors involving human subjects were performed after approval by the appropriate Institutional Review Boards. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ECOGENE-21 and Lipid Clinic, Chicoutimi Hospital, Saguenay, QC, Canada

    Stephanie-May Ruchat & Luigi Bouchard

  2. Department of Biochemistry, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada

    Stephanie-May Ruchat & Luigi Bouchard

  3. Department of Medicine, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada

    Marie-France Hivert

  4. Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Boston, MA, USA

    Marie-France Hivert

  5. Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Marie-France Hivert

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Correspondence to Stephanie-May Ruchat.

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Ruchat, SM., Bouchard, L. & Hivert, MF. Early Infant Nutrition and Metabolic Programming: What Are the Potential Molecular Mechanisms?. Curr Nutr Rep 3, 281–288 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13668-014-0088-0

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