Maternal perinatal undernutrition modifies lactose and serotranferrin in milk: relevance to the programming of metabolic diseases?

A close link between intrauterine growth restriction and development of chronic adult diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension has been established both in humans and animals. Modification of growth velocity during the early postnatal period (i.e., lactation) may also sensitize to the development of metabolic syndrome in adulthood. This suggests that milk composition may have long-lasting programming/deprogramming metabolic effects in the offspring. We therefore assess the effects of maternal perinatal denutrition on breast milk composition in a food-restricted 50% (FR50) rat model. Monosaccharides and fatty acids were characterized by gas chromatography, and proteins were profiled by surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization-time-of-flight analysis in milk samples from FR50 and control rat dams. Milk analysis of FR50 rats demonstrated that maternal undernutrition decreases lactose concentration and modulates lipid profile at postnatal day 10 by increasing the unsaturated fatty acids/saturated fatty acids and diminishes serotransferrin levels at postnatal day 21. Our data indicate that maternal perinatal undernutrition modifies milk composition both quantitatively and qualitatively. These modifications by maternal nutrition open new perspectives to identify molecules that could be used in artificial milk to protect from the subsequent development of metabolic diseases.

Proteomic analysis in cardiovascular diseases.

1. Cardiovascular diseases are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in western countries. The molecular mechanisms responsible for heart dysfunction are still largely unknown, except in cases of genetic defects or alteration of genes and proteins. 2. The publication of genome sequences from humans and other species has demonstrated the complexity of biology, including the finding that one gene does not encode for only one protein but for several, due to mRNA splicing and post-translational modifications. 3. Proteomic analysis can provide an overall understanding of changes in the levels of protein expression. Differential proteomics is a powerful tool for improving our understanding of integrated biochemical responses. The main techniques used are two-dimensional electrophoresis (2D-gel) and Surface-Enhanced Laser Desorption/Ionization Time of Flight (SELDI-TOF) to separate proteins associated with mass spectrometry. Bioinformatic tools make it possible to compare protein profiles obtained from diverse biological samples. 4. The combination of these approaches has proved to be particularly interesting for studying cardiovascular diseases and thereby improving our understanding of the mechanisms involved and identifying new biochemical factors and biomarkers involved in these diseases.