Using neonatal skin to study the developmental programming of aging.

Numerous studies have examined how both negative and positive maternal exposures (environmental contaminants, nutrition, exercise, etc.) impact offspring risk for age-associated diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and others. The purpose of this study was to introduce the foreskin as a novel model to examine developmental programming in human neonates, particularly in regard to adipogenesis and insulin receptor signaling, major contributors to age-associated diseases such as obesity and diabetes.

Controlled exercise is a safe pregnancy intervention in mice.

During pregnancy, women often show a willingness to make positive lifestyle changes, such as smoking cessation, initiation of a vitamin regimen, improvement of their diet, and increases in their levels of exercise or physical activity. To study health outcomes in both pregnant mice and their offspring, we developed a model of controlled maternal exercise during mouse pregnancy. Female ICR and C57BL/6 mice underwent controlled wheel walking for 1 h daily, 5 d each week, at a speed of 6 m/min prior to and during pregnancy and nursing.