ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Metabolism
This article is part of the Research TopicOmega-3 Fatty Acids and Immunometabolism in Health and DiseaseView all 6 articles
Maternal fish oil supplementation improves metabolic and inflammatory markers in mice overfed during the postnatal period
Provisionally accepted
Isabela Queiroz Perígolo Lopes1Brenda Loise Monteiro1Adaliene Versiani Matos Ferreira2Rodrigo Ferreira de Moura1Janina de Sales Guilarducci1
Estéfany Ribeiro Leão1Bárbara do Carmo Rodrigues Virote1Isaac Konig3
Isabela Coelho De Castro1
Luis Murgas1
Laura Cristina Jardim Pôrto Pimenta1*- 1Universidade Federal de Lavras, Lavras, Brazil
- 2Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
- 3Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Cuiabá, Brazil
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Early-life nutrition, especially during gestation and lactation, plays a key role in metabolic programming and can influence the risk of obesity and related disorders in adulthood. This study investigated whether maternal fish oil supplementation, rich in omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, could prevent metabolic and inflammatory changes induced by postnatal overfeeding. Methods: Female mice received fish oil (1 g/kg by oral gavage) during mating, pregnancy, and lactation. The animals were allocated into three groups: Control, Postnatal Overfeeding (PO), and Postnatal Overfeeding + Fish Oil (POFO). Neonatal overfeeding was induced by reducing litter size, and only male offspring were analyzed. In adulthood, body weight, glucose tolerance, lipid profile, serum adipokines, adipose tissue cytokines, and hepatic oxidative stress markers were evaluated. Results: Maternal fish oil supplementation reduced early weight gain and lowered fasting glucose, total cholesterol, and LDL levels, while increasing HDL in overfed offspring. It also decreased serum leptin, resistin, and chemerin levels and reduced hepatic lipid peroxidation, restoring catalase activity. No differences were observed in hepatic triglycerides or superoxide dismutase activity. Conclusion: Maternal fish oil supplementation during critical developmental windows attenuated the metabolic, inflammatory, and oxidative stress alterations induced by postnatal overfeeding in male mice.
Keywords: metabolic programming, overfeeding, omega-3, polyunsaturated fatty acid, Oxidative Stress, Obesity
Received: 13 Aug 2025; Accepted: 31 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lopes, Monteiro, Ferreira, de Moura, de Sales Guilarducci, Leão, Virote, Konig, Coelho De Castro, Murgas and Jardim Pôrto Pimenta. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Laura Cristina Jardim Pôrto Pimenta, laurap@ufla.br
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.