Key result
Maternal high-fat diet induces epigenetic remodeling causing sex-specific cardiac hypertrophy and dysfunction in adult offspring.
Why the study?
Maternal obesity during pregnancy predisposes offspring to cardiovascular and metabolic diseases later in life, but the underlying cardiac perturbations and mechanisms remain incompletely understood.
Maternal high-fat diet induces persistent, sex-specific epigenetic and transcriptomic changes in offspring hearts, predisposing them to cardiac remodeling and dysfunction in adulthood.
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Findings from this animal model should not change practice; leaves open whether maternal diet drives human offspring cardiac epigenetics.
Wilson et al. (2026) studied Maternal obesity and cardiac remodeling. Maternal high-fat diet (HFD) vs. Regular diet (RD) was evaluated on Cardiac function, DNA methylation, and transcriptome alterations. Maternal high-fat diet induced early-life epigenetic remodeling in offspring hearts persisting into adulthood, causing sex-specific cardiac hypertrophy, dysfunction, and metabolic dysregulation.
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