Review uncovers how maternal high-fat diets alter offspring stem cell programming across multiple lineages, indicating increased risk for metabolic and neurodevelopmental disorders.
Stem cells are the fundamental origin of fetal life, and their proliferation and differentiation are pivotal for development, health, and disease susceptibility. Emerging evidence indicates that a maternal high-fat diet (MHFD) during pregnancy and lactation disrupts the intrauterine milieu, thereby impairing stem cell development. This review synthesizes current findings on maternal HFD effects on hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs), neural stem cells (NSCs), adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs), osteo-progenitors, and intestinal stem cells (ISCs) in offspring. Particular emphasis is placed on molecular pathways and metabolic pathways through which maternal HFD regulates stem cell fate. Perturbations in these mechanisms, mediated by epigenetic modifications and gut microbiota dysbiosis, elevate the risk of metabolic disorders, neurodevelopmental deficits, and inflammatory diseases in progeny. Furthermore, this review highlights potential therapeutic strategies, including dietary interventions, epigenetic modulators, and microbiota-targeted therapies, that may mitigate the adverse impact of maternal HFD on stem cell programming and long-term health.
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Gao et al. (2025) studied this question.
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