Female mice that eat a high-fat diet while nursing their pups predispose them to obesity and diabetes by altering the pups' brain wiring.

Tamas Horvath at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut; Jens Brüning at the Max Planck Institute for Neurological Research in Cologne, Germany; and their team discovered that mice that ate a fatty diet during lactation had pups that were fatter, had higher insulin levels and were less sensitive to insulin than the offspring of mothers that ate a normal diet. In the fat pups, fewer fibres from specific neurons branched into regions of the brain's hypothalamus that regulate energy metabolism.

This circuitry is established in mice shortly after birth, but in humans it develops during the last trimester of pregnancy. The authors suggest that a mother's diet during this period could have long-term health effects for the child.

Cell http://doi.org/q7k (2014)