Effect of lactational high fat diet on offspring liver RNA expression

The goal was to study the long term metabolic programming effects of exposure of offspring to a dam eating 60% high fat diet during the lactation period only. We previously showed that offspring from dams given lactational high fat diet (HFD) are predisposed to obesity, glucose intolerance and inflammation. The purpose of these studies was to understand the programming implications of lactational HFD on offspring metabolic liver disease risk. Dams were fed a 60% lard-based HFD from the day of delivery through the 21 day lactation period. Starting at weaning offspring were fed normal fat diet until 3 months of age at which point a subset were challenged with an additional HFD stressor. Lactational HFD fed male offspring developed hepatic insulin resistance. Postweaning HFD challenge led male offspring progressing to NAFLD with more severe outcomes in the lactational HFD challenged offspring. We analyzed 4 adult male offspring livers from each group (HFD-PN and control PN). PN=postnatal