Obesity and its related disorders are the most prevalent health problems in the Western world. Using the paradigm of fetal programming we developed a rodent model which displays the phenotype of obesity and metabolic disorders commonly observed in human populations. We apply maternal undernutrition throughout gestation, generating a nutrient-deprived intrauterine environment to induce fetal programming. Maternal undernutrition results in fetal growth retardation and in significantly decreased body weight at birth. Programmed offspring develop hyperphagia, obesity, hypertension, hyperleptinemia and hyperinsulinism during adult life and postnatal hypercaloric nutrition amplifies the metabolic abnormalities induced by fetal programming. The adipoinsular axis has been proposed as a primary candidate for linking the status of body fat mass to the function of the pancreatic beta-cells. We therefore investigated the relationship between circulating plasma concentrations of leptin and insulin and immunoreactivity in the endocrine pancreas for leptin and leptin receptor (OB-R) in genetically normal rats that were programmed to become obese during adult life. Virgin Wistar rats were time mated and randomly assigned to receive food either available ad libitum (AD group) or at 30% of the ad libitum available intake (UN group). Offspring from UN mothers were significantly smaller at birth than AD offspring (AD 6.13+/-0.04 g, UN 4.02+/-0.03 g, P<0.001). At weaning, offspring were assigned to one of two diets (a standard control diet or a hypercaloric diet consisting of 30% fat) for the remainder of the study. At the time of death (125 days of age), UN offspring had elevated (P<0.005) fasting plasma insulin (AD control 1.417+/-0.15 ng/ml, UN control 2.493+/-0.33 ng/ml, AD hypercaloric 1.70+/-0.17 ng/ml, UN hypercaloric 2.608+/-0.41 ng/ml) and leptin (AD control 8.8+/-1.6 ng/ml, UN control 14.32+/-1.9 ng/ml, AD hypercaloric 15.11+/-1.8 ng/ml, UN hypercaloric 30.18+/-5.3 ng/ml) concentrations, which were further increased (P<0.05) by postnatal hypercaloric nutrition. The elevated plasma insulin and leptin concentrations were paralleled by increased immunolabeling for leptin in the peripheral cells of the pancreatic islets. Dual immunofluorescence histochemistry for somatostatin and leptin revealed that leptin was co-localized in the pancreatic delta-cells. OB-R immunoreactivity was evenly distributed throughout the pancreatic islets and was not changed by programming nor hypercaloric nutrition. Our data suggest that reduced substrate supply during fetal development can trigger permanent dysregulation of the adipoinsular feedback system leading to hyperleptinemia, hyperinsulinism and compensatory leptin production by pancreatic delta-cells in a further attempt to reduce insulin hypersecretion in the progression to adipogenic diabetes.

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