Publications by authors named "Andrea Juca"

Environmental factors in the early life stages can lead the descendant to adaptations in gene expression, permanently impacting several structures and organs. The amount and quality of fatty acids in the maternal diet in pregnancy and lactation were found to impact offspring metabolism. So, maternal diet and insulin resistance can affect the male and female descendants through distinct pathways and at different time points.

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Article Synopsis
  • - This study explored the effects of a high-fat diet (HF) on female rats before conception and its impact on their offspring, particularly focusing on sex-specific metabolic outcomes.
  • - Results showed that offspring exposed to a maternal HF diet exhibited issues like hyperglycemia, increased body fat, and altered lipid profiles, with male offspring experiencing more pronounced hepatic fat accumulation and metabolic disturbances.
  • - While shifting to a normolipidic diet for mothers helped improve some health aspects of the offspring, it highlighted that pre-existing HF diet effects could still lead to complications in glucose metabolism, with potential long-term impacts on the offspring's health.
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Purpose: The gut-brain axis (GBA) is implicated in the development of obesity, and its role in developmental programming needs to be explored. This study uncovers the effects of a parental high-fat, high-sugar diet (HFS) on the gut (colon) and brain (hypothalamus) GBA of male Wistar rat offspring at weaning until adulthood.

Methods: For ten weeks before mating, male progenitors were fed a control diet (CD) or HFS, whereas dams were fed CD or HFS during pregnancy and lactation.

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Parental nutrition can impact the health of future generations, programming the offspring for the development of diseases. The developing germ cells of the offspring could be damaged by the maternal or the paternal environment. The germ cells in development and their function could be affected by nutritional adversity and therefore, harm the health of subsequent generations.

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Purpose: Maternal nutrition during early development and paternal nutrition pre-conception can programme offspring health status. Hypothalamus adipose axis is a target of developmental programming, and paternal and maternal high-fat, high-sugar diet (HFS) may be an important factor that predisposes offspring to develop obesity later in life. This study aims to investigate Wistar rats' maternal and paternal HFS differential contribution on the development, adiposity, and hypothalamic inflammation in male offspring from weaning until adulthood.

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Ionic liquids (ILs) have been proposed as more efficient and sustainable solvents to replace volatile organic solvents (VOSs). However, the drawbacks associated with their use are still limiting the regular application of bioactive compounds obtained from the processes they mediate as food ingredients. It is true that the number of ILs approved by the Food and Drug Administration for food applications is still low and mainly focused on the ones from the quaternary ammonium family.

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