Exercising During Pregnancy Protects Mouse Offspring

Obese mice that exercised while pregnant gave birth to pups that grew up free of the metabolic issues present in the adult young of sedentary obese mothers—possibly by staving off epigenetic changes to a key metabolic gene.

Jack J. Lee

| 4 min read

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ABOVE: When obese female mice exercised during pregnancy, their young grew up to be healthier than pups born to sedentary obese moms.
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The paper
R.C. Laker et al., “Exercise during pregnancy mitigates negative effects of parental obesity on metabolic function in adult mouse offspring,” J Appl Physiol, 130:605–16, 2021.

Obesity is a risk factor for numerous diseases, including cancer and type 2 diabetes. This risk extends to future generations, as parental obesity can leave epigenetic marks in egg and sperm cells that affect the metabolic health of offspring formed from those germ cells. “The health status of the parents matters,” says Zhen Yan, a physician scientist at the University of Virginia who studies exercise physiology.

Yan’s group had previously studied how exercise before and during pregnancy affected the adult offspring of female mice with diet-induced obesity. Maternal exercise improved glucose tolerance in their offspring, and also curbed DNA ...

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Meet the Author

Jack J. Lee
Jack is a science writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has a bachelor’s degree in biology from Caltech and a PhD in molecular biology from Princeton University. He also completed a master’s in science communication at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In July 2021, he began a communications fellowship at the National Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Prevention. You can find more of his work at www.jackjleescience.com.
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