This study was designed to assess the effect of maternal diabetes in rats on serum glucose and insulin concentrations, insulin resistance, histological architecture of pancreas and glycogen content in liver of offspring. The pregnant rat females were allocated into two main groups: normal control group and streptozotocin-induced diabetic group. After birth, the surviving offspring were subjecte...

B irth weight of people is related to their risk of noninsulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM), which may reflect intra-uterine programming of disease risk, or common genetic factors related both to birth weight and to NIDDM risk. The latter has been called the ‘‘fetal insulin hypothesis’’. Currently there is little direct evidence for this hypothesis, although two studies have shown an inv...

In Europid populations, low birth weight of offspring predicts insulin resistance in the mother and cardiovascular disease in both parents. We investigated the association between birth weight of offspring and obesity and cardiovascular risk in the parents of 477 8-year-old children born at the King Edward Memorial Hospital, Pune, India. Eight years after the birth of the child, mothers (33 yea...

BACKGROUND It is hypothesized that associations found between birth weight and subsequent risk of type-2 diabetes are due to inherited genes affecting both fetal growth and metabolism of insulin. METHODS To study whether there is a familial (shared environmental and genetic) link between birth weight and type-2 diabetes, the authors used a sample of 11,411 Swedish like-sexed twins born from 1...

I. The reproductive performance of rats reared from weaning on a moderately proteindeficient (LP) diet containing Sogcaseinjkg, or on a control diet (HP) containing 250 g casein/kg has been studied. Although the rate of growth was reduced in LP animals, these rats eventually achieved the same adult weight and appearance as the controls. 2. Weight gain during the first z weeks of gestation was s...

Maternal effects are the influence of maternal phenotype and maternally-provided environment on (i.e., expression traits) offspring. Frequently, manifest both before after parturition. Pre-parturition primarily direct allocation energy to offspring that is in utero . Post-parturition can include (e.g., nursing defending offspring) indirect selection habitat relatively safe or has high nutrition...

BACKGROUND Although maternal infection and inflammation during pregnancy can adversely affect offspring birth weight (BW), whether low grade inflammation in the non-pregnant state predicts BW is unknown. AIM To evaluate relationships between offspring BW and pro- and anti-inflammatory factors measured in parous but non-pregnant women. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Data come from 234 parous Filipino ...

Cooperative breeding systems, in which non-breeding individuals provide care for the offspring of dominant group members, occur in less than 1% of mammals and are associated with social monogamy and the production of multiple offspring per birth (polytocy). Here, we show that the distribution of alloparental care by non-breeding subordinates is associated with habitats where annual rainfall is ...

Reproductive and early life-history traits can be considered aspects of either offspring or maternal phenotype, and their evolution will therefore depend on selection operating through offspring and maternal components of fitness. Furthermore, selection at these levels may be antagonistic, with optimal offspring and maternal fitness occurring at different phenotypic values. We examined selectio...