Epigenetic impact on children’s future

Abstract

The adult diet and lifestyle are conventionally considered at the origin of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases that occur during life time. The hypothesis that supports the link between intrauterine malnutrition, prematurity, maternal stress, and the occurrence of type 2 diabetes and ischemic heart disease in adults/elderly, called Developmental Origins of Adult Disease, has been supported by numerous clinical studies. The concept of fetal phenotype programming gained consistency through epigenetic studies that showed how DNA methylation changes, histone changes, maintained over time are at the origin of chronic adult diseases. Initially demonstrated through studies on experimental animals and later through research on human subjects exposed to extreme situations, epigenetic changes were identified in severe maternal malnutrition, folic acid deficiency, smoking and maternal obesity or contact with environmental toxins. It is possible for some of the epigenetic changes to be transgenerational transmitted, their argumentation subject to objective limitations.

Keywords

• fetal malnutrition
• coronary disease
• type 2 diabetes
• obesity
• epigenetics