The Responses of Mouse Preimplantation Embryos to Leptin in a Transgenerational Model for Obesity.

The aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that leptin can directly mediate the negative effect of maternal obesity on preimplantation embryos. As previously shown, maternal obesity retards early embryonic development and increases the incidence of apoptosis in blastocysts. When two-cell embryos isolated from control and obese mice were transferred to identical (leptin free) conditions , no differences in any growth or quality parameters were recorded, including apoptosis incidence in blastocysts.