Low birth weight is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes in later life. The fetal insulin hypothesis suggests that shared genetic factors partly explain this association. If fetal genes predispose to both low birth weight and cardiovascular disease in adulthood, fathers of offspring with low birth weight should display an unfavorable profile of cardiovasc...

BACKGROUND Maternal blood pressures in pregnancy is an important determinant of offspring size at birth. However, the relationship between maternal blood pressures and offspring's size at birth is not consistent and may vary between ethnic groups. We examined the relationship between maternal peripheral and central blood pressures and offspring size at birth in an Asian multi-ethnic cohort, and...

background: in recent years concerns have been raised about human reproductive disorders, specially the effects of environmental factors on human fertility and pregnancy outcome. therefore, the present study was designed to assess the effects of maternal caffeine consumption on ovarian follicles development in rat offspring. methods: 60 pregnant female rats were randomly divided into a control ...

Two primary dichotomies within vertebrate life histories involve reproductive mode (oviparity versus viviparity) and sex determination (genotypic sex determination versus environmental sex determination). Although reptiles show multiple evolutionary transitions in both parameters, the co-occurrence of viviparity and environmental-dependent sex determination have heretofore been regarded as inco...

IMPORTANCE Preterm birth is associated with increased mortality and morbidity. However, previous studies have been unable to rigorously examine whether confounding factors cause these associations rather than the harmful effects of being born preterm. OBJECTIVE To estimate the extent to which the associations between early gestational age and offspring mortality and morbidity are the result o...

objective: although in vitro studies have shown that high concentrations of glucose can induce dysmorphogenesis of the embryonic kidney, the possible adverse effects of exposure to intrauterine hyperglycemia on kidney development, especially in regard to nephrogenesis, has not been evaluated. the aim of this study is to investigate the effects of maternal diabetes on glomeruli structures of the...

Background: Alpha Methyldopa (AMD) is a well-known treatment for the pregnancy induced hypertension and commonly used in several countries. Indeed the possible effect of AMD on the behavioral activities of offspring, whom are exposed during fetus period, has not been studied. The present study evaluated the possible effect of maternal administration of AMD on the rat offspring memory in the gro...

Both high and low maternal dietary intakes adversely affect fetal nutrient supply in adolescent sheep pregnancies. Aims were: (a) to assess the impact of prenatal nutrition on pregnancy outcome, offspring growth and offspring glucose metabolism and (b) to determine whether the offspring metabolic phenotype could then be altered by modifying postnatal nutrition. Dams carrying a single fetus were...

BACKGROUND Studies in older adults and animals have suggested contrasting relations between bone health and different vitamin A compounds. To our knowledge, the associations between maternal vitamin A status and offspring bone development have not previously been elucidated. OBJECTIVE We examined the associations between maternal serum retinol and β-carotene concentrations during late pregnan...

Many organisms produce offspring with sex-ratios that deviate from equal numbers of males and females, and numerous adaptive explanations have been proposed. In some species, offspring sex-ratio varies across the reproductive season, again with several explanations as to why this might be adaptive. However, patterns for birds and mammals are inconsistent, and multiple factors are likely involve...