Effect of Maternal Diet and Exercise on Placental Prolactin : Research conducted at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA

Details

Supervisors

Deldicque, Louise

Faculty

Faculté des sciences de la motricité

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de la motricité, orientation éducation physique, à finalité approfondie

Abstract

enType 2 diabetes has an intergenerational transmission, and its prevalence keeps rising. Fortunately, exercise and diet interventions seem to be potent actors to break that vicious circle. Central is the placenta, an actively adaptive organ mediating the effects of maternal lifestyle on the offspring. Within this environment, a novel player is examined: placental prolactin. Highly expressed in the decidua, prolactin has numerous actions that have not, to date, been reviewed comprehensively. This thesis investigates the effects of maternal high-fat diet (HFD) and exercise on placental prolactin expression. Using a mouse model, this study reveals sex-specific adaptations in the placenta. At baseline, female placentas displayed significantly higher decidual prolactin than males. Following interventions, male placentas responded to maternal exercise with a decidual prolactin increase, amplified when combined with maternal HFD. Oppositely, female placentas reacted to HFD with a decidual prolactin decrease. To contextualize these findings, proteomics and lipidomics analyses were performed revealing that, among other findings, maternal exercise triggered a cytotoxic response in females and that maternal HFD under exercised conditions induced opposite lipid storage strategies between the sexes. These discoveries lay the foundation for future investigations to understand the potential role of prolactin in combating the intergenerational transmission of metabolic dysfunction and diabetes.