NEW YORK (Reuters) -- What a mother eats during pregnancy may influence the health of her child in middle or later life, say researchers who found that a low fiber diet during a woman's pregnancy may increase the likelihood of her child developing the common bowel disorder, colonic diverticulosis, during adulthood.
The researchers say their study on laboratory rats, which appears in the September issue of the British medical journal Gut, can be applied to humans. They note that colonic diverticulosis -- the presence of small sacs (diverticula) along the inner lining of the bowel -- "is a prevalent disease in humans and is believed to be linked to dietary fiber intake throughout life."
In their study, the researchers studied two groups of rats. One group received a high fiber diet one month before mating; the other group had a low fiber diet. The same diets were also fed to the two genetically identical groups of their offspring for 18 months.
"Offspring of rats fed a higher fiber diet from higher-fiber-diet-fed parents had 0% incidence of colonic diverticulosis," the researchers say. But rats fed a low fiber diet whose parents' diets were also low in fiber were almost twice as likely to have evidence of the disease as rats on a low fiber diet but whose parents had been fed a diet high in fiber before conception.
"These results suggest that maternal diet may have a significant role in the development of gastrointestinal disease," say the authors.
A possible explanation for the difference between the groups, they say, may be differences in the composition of the mothers' milk, which could alter the collagen content of the sucking baby's colon and thus its elasticity and strength, as well as affect the amount of normal intestinal bacteria necessary for the breakdown of fecal waste.
Diverticulosis is rare in developing countries (where diets are rich in grains and other roughage), but in Western Europe and the U.S. it affects more than half the population by age 80. Symptoms, when they occur, result from spasm or cramp of the intestinal wall near diverticula. Treatment includes a high-fiber diet and anti-spasmodic drugs.
SOURCE: Gut, (1996;39:1-4)
