Effects of maternal high-fat diet on motor ability,learning and memory of male offspring mice in late adolescence

AIM To study the effects of maternal high-fat diet （HFD） on motor ability， learning and memory of male offspring mice in late adolescence and the underlying mechanism. METHODS The female rats were fed with HFD for 16 weeks until the end of lactation to establish the obesity model， and the offspring male rats were taken as the main research object. The motor coordination of offspring mice was studied by footprinting analysis and rotarod experiment， the change of motor ability of male offspring mice was studied by open field experiment， the change of learning memory behavior of offspring mice was studied by Morris water maze and new object recognition experiment， and the neurogenesis of dentate gyrus （DG） in hippocampus of offspring mice was observed by immunofluorescence staining. RESULTS The footprint angle of the offspring mice in maternal HFD group decreased significantly， and the stay time in rotarod of the offspring mice in maternal HFD group was significantly shorter than that of the offspring mice in maternal normal diet group（P<0.01）. In the open field experiment， the number of vertical times， the central time and the total distance of movement were significantly reduced， and the latency of water maze experiment and the preference index of new object recognition were significantly reduced. The results of immunofluorescence staining showed that the degree and complexity of neuron differentiation in DG area of hippocampus of offspring mice in maternal HFD group decreased significantly（P<0.01）. CONCLUSION Maternal HFD damages the movement and learning abilities of the male offspring in late adolescence by affecting the hippocampus neurogenesis.