Dietary Restriction and the Endocrine Profiles in Offspring and Adults

Recent studies have shown that in addition to genetic factors and environmental factors, undernutrition in utero and the nutritional status during postnatal life have irreversible health consequences in later life. Endocrine hormones including insulin, insulin-like growth factors (IGFs), thyroid hormones, leptin, cortisol, and glucocorticoid regulate fetal growth and development, and they have an important role in intrauterine programming. The fetal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is vulnerable to changes in the intrauterine environment, and even subtle changes in the environment can disrupt the balance of fetal HPA development with glucocorticoid production, and finally alter long-term HPA activity and function. Especially, glucocorticoids are important regulatory signals during intrauterine development, and they act as maturational, environmental, and programming signals that modify the developing phenotype to optimize offspring viability. Glucocorticoids act as environmental signals that change the fetal epigenome and optimize the phenotype in utero. If the postnatal environment differs from those signals in utero, the glucocorticoid-induced changes in offspring may be maladaptive and lead to have cardiometabolic diseases and detrimental health in adults.