Ludwig Feuerbach already said in 1850 that “you are what you eat“, but what the German philosopher did not know is that you are also what they have eaten (and what they have not) your grandparents
A study from Tulane University, New Orleans (USA), published in the journal ‘Heliyon’, shows that what lack in a person’s diet can also affect the health of their descendants over several generationsThus, famine in one generation can cause harmful genetic consequences in the next, but questions remain about how many generations could be affected when an ancestor suffers a nutritional crisis.
The researchers found that when paired mice were fed a low-protein diet, Their offspring over the next four generations had lower birth weight and smaller kidneys, which constitutes an important risk factor for chronic kidney disease and hypertension.
Later, experts tried to correct the diet of the offspring, but had no effect and subsequent generations continued to be born with low nephron counts, the vital filtration units that help the kidneys remove waste from the bloodstream. Although much remains to be done to determine whether the findings can be applied to humans, the results underscore the possibility that food shortages or malnutrition could lead to decades of adverse health consequences.
“The mother’s diet is absolutely important”
““It’s like an avalanche,” says lead author and associate professor of pediatric nephrology at Tulane University School of Medicine, Giovane Tortelote. “You would think that you can correct the diet in the first generation so that the problem ends there, but even if they have a good diet, subsequent generations (grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren) can be born with a lower weight and a low nephron count even though they have never gone through starvation or a low-protein diet,” he adds.
While maternal nutrition is crucial for a baby’s development, the study found that the offspring of the The first generation was negatively affected regardless of whether the mother or father ate a protein-deficient diet.
The researchers studied four generations of offspring whose nephron counts began to show signs of normalization in the third and fourth generations. Tortelote says more research is needed to determine which generation returns to having proper kidney development and why the trait is passed on in the first place. “The mother’s diet is absolutely important, but it seems that there is also something epigenetic from the father that regulates proper kidney development,” explains the expert.
Finally, the study also sheds light on a greater understanding of the underlying causes of chronic kidney disease, the eighth leading cause of death in the United States. “If you are born with fewer nephrons, you are more likely to suffer from hypertensionbut the more hypertension you have, the more kidney damage you will suffer, so it is a horrible cycle and a public health crisis that could affect people in their 50s and 60s if we apply this to the life expectancy of humans,” adds the nephrologist.
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