Fetal Growth as a Cue of Matrilineal Nutritional History in the Philippines

胎儿通过胎盘从母亲那里获得的营养不仅会影响其生长速度，还会影响个人的成年生物学，包括生殖功能、体型以及患高血压、糖尿病或心脏病等慢性病的风险。随着更多的研究证明宫内状况的长期影响，这引发了关于它们功能的新问题。有人提出，这些发育调整代表了一种适应形式，即母体生物学通过胎盘发出信号，允许胎儿根据出生后环境中的营养和其他条件来调整其新陈代谢和生物学。这种代际信号传递的想法已经在其他物种中得到了证明，但大多数都是短暂的。在人类这样的长寿物种中，这样的系统如何运作还不太清楚，因为母亲在怀孕期间的饮食或健康状况，可能不太能代表人类后代在这种生态环境中生活的多年或数十年的典型情况。为了阐明胎儿营养作为生态营养线索的作用，这项研究将测试女性的营养和生长发育史是否可以预测其后代的胎儿生长速度。这个美国和菲律宾的研究团队将与一项研究合作，这项研究最初在1983年招募了3000多名孕妇，此后收集了她们后代随着年龄增长的生长、营养和其他特征的详细信息。最初的后代现在是生育年龄的成年人，有自己的后代(年龄25-26岁)，使该团队能够使用跨越3代母系的数据来评估胎儿营养和生长率的代际预测因素。将跟踪所有妇女(最初的雌性后代n~900)，以确定新的怀孕情况，并将在怀孕期间和出生时收集有关饮食、健康和营养状况的信息。这将复制她们母亲在婴儿时期收集的数据，并允许识别母亲营养历史中的哪些因素，追溯到祖母怀孕的营养状况，预测她们后代的胎儿生长速度。此外，出生记录将被用来重建这些女性以前的后代以及研究男性配偶的出生体重，这将提供对遗传和发育因素对胎儿生长速度影响的相对重要性的洞察。这项研究将澄清来自母亲营养历史的哪些信息可能编码在胎儿营养中，并反映在胎儿生长速度中。这将有助于解释胎儿发育可塑性作为人类生物适应机制的作用，并将阐明这些系统可能如何影响未来的健康。通过澄清母亲发育史中预测后代胎儿生长速度的营养和其他因素的年龄和类型，这项研究还可能导致旨在改善生育结果的母亲营养补充的新方法。

The nutrition that a fetus receives from the mother across the placenta influences not only its rate of growth but also that individual's adult biology, including reproductive function, body size and risk of developing chronic diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease. As more studies demonstrate such long-term effects of intrauterine conditions, this has led to new questions about their function. It has been proposed that these developmental adjustments represent a form of adaptation in which maternal biology sends cues across the placenta that allow the fetus to adjust its metabolism and biology in anticipation of nutrition and other conditions in the postnatal environment. This idea of intergenerational signaling has been demonstrated in other species, but most are short-lived. How such a system might operate in a long-lived species like humans is less clear, because the mother's diet or health during the months of pregnancy may be less representative of typical conditions over the many years or decades that a human offspring will live in that ecology. To clarify the role of fetal nutrition as an ecological nutritional cue, this study will test whether a woman's developmental history of nutrition and growth predict the fetal growth rate of her offspring. This US and Filipino team of researchers will work with a study that originally enrolled 3000+ pregnant women in 1983 and has since collected detailed information on the growth, nutrition, and other characteristics of their offspring as they aged. The original offspring are now reproductive-aged adults having offspring of their own (age 25-26 years), allowing this team to evaluate the intergenerational predictors of fetal nutrition and growth rate using data spanning 3 matrilineal generations. All women (the original female offspring n~900) will be tracked to identify new pregnancies, and information on diet, health and nutritional status will be collected during pregnancy and in their newborns at birth. This will replicate data collected in their mothers when they were infants, and allow identification of which factors in the mother's nutritional history, extending back to the grandmother's pregnancy nutritional status, predict fetal growth rate in their offspring. In addition, birth records will be used to reconstruct birth weight of prior offspring of these women, but also of the spouses of study males, which will provide insights into the relative importance of genetic and developmental factors as influences on fetal growth rate.This study will clarify what information from the mother's nutritional history might be encoded in fetal nutrition and reflected in fetal growth rate. This will help explain the role of fetal developmental plasticity as a mechanism of biological adaptation in humans and will shed light on how these systems might influence later health. By clarifying the ages and types of nutritional and other factors in the mother's developmental past that predict offspring fetal growth rate, this study could also lead to new approaches to maternal nutritional supplementation aimed at improving birth outcomes.