Maternal Leucine-Rich Diet Minimises Muscle Mass Loss in Tumour-bearing Adult Rat Offspring by Improving the Balance of Muscle Protein Synthesis and Degradation

• Published in: Biomolecules (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 9; no. 6; p. 229
• Main Authors: Miyaguti, Natália Angelo da Silva, Oliveira, Sarah Christine Pereira de, Gomes-Marcondes, Maria Cristina Cintra
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI 13.06.2019; MDPI AG
• Subjects: Animals; Body Weight - drug effects; branched-chain amino acid; Cachexia - complications; Cachexia - metabolism; Cachexia - pathology; cancer cachexia; Diet; Eating - drug effects; Female; Leucine - analysis; Male; maternal influence; Mothers; muscle protein turnover; Muscle Proteins - biosynthesis; Muscle Proteins - metabolism; Muscle, Skeletal - drug effects; Muscle, Skeletal - metabolism; Muscle, Skeletal - pathology; Muscles - drug effects; Muscles - metabolism; Muscles - pathology; Neoplasms - complications; Organ Size - drug effects; Pregnancy; Proteolysis - drug effects; Rats; Rats, Wistar; muscle protein turnover; branched-chain amino acid; maternal influence; cancer cachexia
• DOI: 10.3390/biom9060229
• ISSN: 2218-273X

Cachexia syndrome can affect cancer patients and new prevention strategies are required. Maternal nutritional supplementation can modify metabolic programming in the offspring, which lasts until adulthood. This could be a good approach against diseases such as cancer. A 3% leucine-rich diet treatment improved muscle protein turnover by modifying the mTOR and proteolytic pathways, thus we analysed whether maternal supplementation could ameliorate muscle protein turnover in adult offspring tumour-bearing rats. Pregnant Wistar rats received a control diet or 3% leucine-rich diet during pregnancy/lactation, and their weaned male offspring received a control diet until adulthood when they were distributed into following groups (n = 7-8 per group): C, Control; W, tumour-bearing; L, without tumour with a maternal leucine-rich diet; and WL, tumour-bearing with a maternal leucine-rich diet. Protein synthesis and degradation were assessed in the gastrocnemius muscle, focusing on the mTOR pathway, which was extensively altered in W group. However, the WL adult offspring showed no decrease in muscle weight, higher food intake, ameliorated muscle turnover, activated mTOR and p70S6K, and maintained muscle cathepsin H and calpain activities. Maternal leucine nutritional supplementation could be a positive strategy to improve muscle protein balance in cancer cachexia-induced muscle damage in adult offspring rats.