K M Godfrey

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..With minor revision, this could be a useful tool for future research in this area. This, in turn, will aid the development of interventions to promote physical activity in this age group...

..Here we test the hypothesis that in low-risk pregnancies fetal growth (expressed by fetal size in the second trimester) is itself a determinant for pregnancy duration with the slower growing fetuses having a longer pregnancy...

..Understanding the maternal regulation of human fetal development could lead to public health measures that improve the adult health of future generations...

..This mismatch may arise through unbalanced diet or body composition of the mother or a change in lifestyle factors between generations. These insights offer new possibilities for the early diagnosis and prevention of chronic disease...

..Future interventions to improve placental function are likely to have lifelong health benefits for the offspring...

..This acknowledges the importance of developmental adaptations to alterations in the nutrient and hormonal milieu in utero and could have a major impact on human health in the century to come...

..Although the influences that impair fetal development and programme adult cardiovascular disease remain to be defined, there are strong pointers to the importance of maternal body composition and dietary balance during pregnancy...

..0005); this could reflect important compositional changes in the microvillous plasma membrane, leading in vivo to increased back-diffusion of amino acids out of the syncytiotrophoblast...

..In animal models, maternal diet alters offspring body composition, accompanied by epigenetic changes in metabolic control genes. Little is known about whether such processes operate in humans...

..We used data from the Southampton Women's Survey to investigate parental influences on neonatal body composition ascertained by dual x-ray absorptiometry...

..The results suggest that placental PHLDA2 may provide a biomarker for suboptimal skeletal growth in pregnancies uncomplicated by overt fetal growth restriction...

..This association may explain, in part, the mechanism whereby a mother's 25(OH)-vitamin D stores influence her offspring's bone mass...

..However, the paternal determinants of neonatal bone mass are not known. In this study we explored the relationship between a father's bone mass and that of his offspring...

..In this study we investigate the relationships between placental size and neonatal bone mass and body composition, in a population-based cohort...

..Maternal diet during pregnancy has been linked to offspring adiposity, but it is unclear whether maternal polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) status during pregnancy affects offspring body composition...

..003; β=-7.7 mg/mm(3) per sd, p=0.02 respectively). These results suggest that fat mass is negatively associated with volumetric bone density at 6 years old, independent of lean mass, despite positive associations with bone size...

..This alteration may affect fetal development, altering fetal body composition, with long-term consequences...

..Vitamin D supplementation of pregnant women, especially during winter months, could lead to longlasting reductions in the risk of osteoporotic fracture in their offspring...

..Consistent with a role in placental amino acid transfer capacity and fetal growth TAT1 and LAT3 mRNA expression showed positive associations with infant size at birth...

..Consequences of such "liver-sparing" may underlie the increased cardiovascular risk of people whose mothers were slimmer and had lower body fat stores in pregnancy...

..To investigate whether exposure to high maternal concentrations of 25(OH)-vitamin D in pregnancy poses any risk to the child...

..In addition, among previously documented maternal determinants of neonatal bone mass in healthy pregnancies, maternal fat stores may mediate their effect on fetal bone accrual through variation in fetal leptin concentrations...

..Relationships between physical activity and bone indices were stronger when calcium intake was above compared with below median (966 mg/day)...

..This study suggests that uptake of L-serine into MVM vesicles and villous fragments via Systems A and L is comparable, but that this is not true for all components of L-serine uptake...

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..To assess the relationship between development in utero, assessed by birth weight, and muscle strength in young adult women as assessed by grip strength...

..These associations may reflect the metabolic stress imposed on the mother by an unbalanced diet in which high intakes of essential amino acids are not accompanied by the nutrients required to utilize them...

..These results suggest that brain growth during infancy and early childhood is more important than growth during foetal life in determining cognitive function...

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..We conclude that dietary patterns consistent with current advice for healthy eating during pregnancy are associated with greater bone size and BMD in the offspring at 9 yr of age...

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..Documented maternal determinants of neonatal bone mass seem to mediate their effects independently of variations in cord serum IGF-1 in healthy pregnancies...

..Further research is needed to gain insight into the evolution of dietary habits in childhood and to determine how these practices influence obesity risk...

..Further studies are now required to define the fate of L-serine taken up by the placenta and its importance for the fetus...

..We examined for associations of maternal folate status and dietary intake during pregnancy with brain growth and childhood behavioural difficulties in the offspring...

..As each index captures different aspects of size in terms of adiposity, there is the need to determine how the three indices relate to function and how they can be of use in defining risk of ill health in women...

..To evaluate the relative validity of an FFQ for assessing nutrient intakes in 12-month-old infants...

..Recent studies have suggested that the ratio of the length of the second finger relative to the length of the fourth finger (2D:4D ratio) is determined during fetal life and may be such a marker...

..Evidence suggests that babies' fat mass at birth is greater if their mothers were themselves fatter during pregnancy, but it is unclear whether this association persists into childhood...

..Using applied scores, there was a very small mean decrease in prudent diet score in pregnancy and a very small mean increase in high-energy diet score in late pregnancy, indicating little overall change in dietary patterns in pregnancy...

..The low activity of SHMT in the human and rat placenta suggests that, unlike in the sheep, placental conversion of serine to glycine is not a major source of fetal glycine in these species...

..To investigate the relation between breastfeeding, use of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)-fortified formula and neuropsychological function in children...

..The graded inverse associations with breastfeeding duration suggest that current efforts to promote breastfeeding and increase duration will have important effects in reducing morbidity in infancy...

..The present findings show that the pattern of induced changes in the adult liver transcriptome were dependent on maternal protein and folic acid intakes during pregnancy...

..These findings suggest that induction in the offspring of altered epigenetic regulation of the hepatic GR1(10) promoter, and hence metabolic phenotype, may be due to reduced Dnmt1 expression...

..These results suggest a discordance between influences on skeletal size and volumetric density...

..Although there is encouraging evidence of changed health behaviours in pregnancy, young women and those with few educational qualifications may particularly benefit from targeted health initiatives...

..Most studies of infant diet and later body composition focus on milk feeding; few consider the influence of variations in the weaning diet...

..In animal models, a restricted or unbalanced maternal diet during gestation can influence susceptibility to atherosclerosis, but the relation in humans between maternal diet during pregnancy and atherogenesis is unknown...

..The first two dietary patterns identified in this cohort of pregnant women appear to be defined similarly by both FFQ and diary data, suggesting that FFQ data provide useful information on dietary patterns...

..Therefore, we investigated associations between size at birth and motor activity during psychosocial stress...

..As oily fish is a major dietary source of omega-3 fatty acids, it is possible that low intake of fish during pregnancy may have adverse effects on the developing fetal brain...

..However, data from this study do not support a major developmental contribution to the etiology of depression in women...

..Therefore, we have assessed the relationship between birth weight and cardiovascular physiology in children...

..Therefore, we tested for associations of fetal growth with behavioural problems in children and tested if temperament mediated such effects...

..The extent to which such prenatal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis adaptations occur in humans is unknown...

..To examine the extent to which women planning a pregnancy comply with recommendations for nutrition and lifestyle...

..Although many studies have examined the relation between type of milk received in infancy and subsequent cognition, there has been no investigation of the possible effect of variations in the weaning diet...

..Our data provide strong evidence of shared family patterns of diet and suggest that interventions to improve the quality of young women's diets could be effective in improving the quality of their children's diets...

..We observed wide variations in current infant feeding practice, but these variations were not associated with differences in childhood bone mass at age 4 years...

..Intrauterine life may be a critical period for the programming of later obesity, but there is conflicting evidence about whether pregnancy weight gain is an important determinant of offspring adiposity...

..However, the mode of delivery had a significant effect on this difference; medians for vaginal and Caesarean section deliveries were 19 per cent and 14 per cent respectively...

..To evaluate the relative validity of a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) for assessing nutrient intakes in 6-month-old infants...

..Adopting a life course approach that takes into account intergenerational effects has important implications for prevention of non-communicable diseases, particularly in populations undergoing rapid economic transition...

..This study demonstrates that these transporters have the capacity to exchange micromolar amounts of specific amino acids, and suggests that they play an important role in regulating fetal plasma amino acid composition...

..001). Lung function measurements were not related to infant feeding. The observations suggest that lower rates of fetal growth and higher rates of early infancy weight gain are associated with impaired lung development...

..Differential abundance of AGTR1 mRNA haplotypes may mediate clinical phenotypic observations of the AGTR1 genotype...

..6%. CONCLUSION: Impaired fetal growth may have long-term effects on cardiac structure. This may help to explain why adults whose birth weight was low are at greater risk for coronary heart disease...

..Because raised fasting cortisol concentrations probably reflect a greater response to the stress of fasting and venesection, we suspected that this diet may have led to increased stress responsiveness in the adult offspring...