Increased susceptibility of prenatal food restricted offspring to high-fat diet-induced nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is intrauterine programmed

•The potential mechanism under prenatal food restriction and adult NAFLD was explored.•The adverse intrauterine programming of hepatic lipid metabolism could increase the susceptibility to NAFLD.•The adverse intrauterine programming of glucocorticoid-IGF1 axis could accelerate the occurrence of NAFLD.

The present study aims to explore the mechanisms of fetal origin of high susceptibility to adult high-fat diet induced-nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in rat offspring undergoing intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) induced by prenatal food restriction (FR) from gestational day 11 until full-term delivery. We observed that adult IUGR offspring rats exhibited gender-dependent catch-up growth with lower serum corticosterone (CORT) but up-regulation of the insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) pathway, higher hepatic Kleiner scores and lower lipid export and oxidation. Furthermore, fetal IUGR offspring rats showed lower body weights with higher serum CORT but down-regulated IGF1 pathway, which was accompanied by enhanced lipid de novo synthetic gene expression, lower lipid output and oxidation gene expression. It is suggested that a “two-programming” mechanism, which refers to the adverse intrauterine programming of hepatic lipid de novo synthesis and glucocorticoid-IGF1 axis programming associated with postnatal catch-up growth, could explain the increased susceptibility.