Hepatic Gene Expression from Offspring of Lean and Obese Dams

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is an important co-morbidity associated with obesity and a precursor to steatohepatitis. However, the contributions of gestational and early life influences on development of NAFLD and NASH remain poorly appreciated. Here we examine whether maternal over-nutrition via exposure to high fat diet (HFD) leads to exacerbated hepatic responses to post-natal HFD using RNA-seq based transcriptomic analysis. Offspring of both control diet- and HFD-fed dams were weaned onto control and HFD, creating four groups. When compared to their control diet-fed littermates, offspring of HF-dams weaned onto HFD gained greater body weight; had increased relative liver weight and showed hepatic steatosis and inflammation. Similarly, this group revealed significantly greater immune response and pro-fibrogenic gene expression via RNA-seq.