Prenatal and postnatal mothering by diesel exhaust PM2.5-exposed dams differentially program mouse energy metabolism

Background Obesity is one of the leading threats to global public health. It is consequent to abnormal energy metabolism. Currently, it has been well established that maternal exposure to environmental stressors that cause inappropriate fetal development may have long-term adverse effects on offspring energy metabolism in an exposure timing-dependent manner, known as developmental programming of health and diseases paradigm. Rapidly increasing evidence has indicated that maternal exposure to ambient fine particles (PM2.5) correlates to abnormal fetal development. In the present study, we therefore assessed whether maternal exposure to diesel exhaust PM2.5 (DEP), the major component of ambient PM2.5 in urban areas, programs offspring energy metabolism, and further examined how the timing of exposure impacts this programming.