Scope: The transgenerational impact of dietary fat remains unclear. Here, the role of maternal fat consumption as a modulator of gut microbial communities and infectious disease outcomes in their offspring is explored.
Methods and results: C57BL/6 mice are fed isocaloric high-fat diets throughout breeding, gestation and lactation. Diets contained either milk fat (MF), olive oil (OO) or corn oil (CO), with or without fish oil. The pups born to maternally exposed mice are weaned on to chow and raised into adulthood. At 8 weeks, the offsprings are either euthanized for colonic 16S rRNA analysis or challenged with the enteric pathogen, Citrobacter rodentium. Maternal CO exposure resulted in unique clustering of bacterial communities in offspring compared with MF and OO. Diets rich in CO reduced survival in offspring challenged with C. rodentium. The addition of fish oil did not improve mortality caused by CO and worsened disease outcomes when combined with OO. Unlike the unsaturated diets, MF is protective with and without fish oil.
Conclusions: Overall, these data reveal that maternal intake of fatty acids do have transgenerational impacts on their offspring's bacteriome and enteric infection risk. Based on this study, saturated fats should be included in maternal diets.
Keywords: colonization resistance; dietary fatty acid; enteric disease susceptibility; maternal programming.
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