High Fat Diet During Pregnancy and Lactation Induces Hypertension in Adult Offspring Rats

An adequate nutritional support is important to ensure a normal development of the fetuses. Changes in the nutritional support during gestation may lead to transitory or permanent structural and functional changes of several organs of the offspring. We aimed to investigate the impact of a high fat diet during the gestation on cardiovascular and autonomic nervous systems (ANS) in the offspring of rats. High fat diet was given from day 1 of gestation until weaning of puppies. Sixty‐day‐old offspring from High Fat Diet dams (HFDD, n= 6) or Normal Diet dams (NDD, n= 6) had femoral arteries surgically assessed for the measurements of heart rate (HR), mean (MAP), systolic (SAP) and diastolic arterial pressure (DAP), and spontaneous baroreflex sensitivity (BRS). To investigate the balance of ANS, we established the high (HF) and low frequency (LF) bands of pulse interval (PI) and LF band of SAP spectrum. HFDD had increased MAP (135 ± 2vs 103± 1 mmHg, p<0.05), SAP (160 ± 3 vs 128 ± 4 mmHg, p<0.05), DAP (111 ± 2vs 91 ± 2 mmHg, p<0.05) and HR (417 ± 23 vs 352 ± 8 bpm, p<0.05) when compared to NDD. After spectral analysis of PI and SAP, LF band of SAP spectrum (6.19 ± 0.84 vs 2.29 ± 0.56 mmHg2, p<0.05) and LF/HF ratio of PI (0.71 ± 0.22 vs 0.14 ± 0.016 p<0.05) was higher in HFDD under spontaneous condition. These findings suggest that high fat diet during pregnancy and lactation leads to autonomic misbalance and hypertension in adult offspring rats.