Perinatal Western Diet Consumption Leads to Profound Plasticity and GABAergic Phenotype Changes within Hypothalamus and Reward Pathway from Birth to Sexual Maturity in Rat

This article is part of the Research Topic Early Life Origins of Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes.; International audience; Perinatal maternal consumption of energy dense food increases the risk of obesity in children. This is associated with an overconsumption of palatable food that is consumed for its hedonic property. The underlying mechanism that links perinatal maternal diet and offspring preference for fat is still poorly understood. In this study, we aim at studying the influence of maternal high-fat/high-sugar diet feeding [western diet (WD)] during gestation and lactation on the reward pathways controlling feeding in the rat offspring from birth to sexual maturity. We performed a longit…