(P07-017-23) Gender-Dependent Changes of Brain Functional Organization in Offspring Following Perinatal Dietary Supplementation

Objectives: Perinatal nutritional status significantly impacts infant brain development and a gender-specific neurodevelopmental outcome in early life has been gaining attention. Egg yolks and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) are recommended for consumption during the perinatal stage due to their benefits on brain development in offspring. Using a pig model, we examined how maternal egg yolk and DHA intake influence the brain functional organization of offspring and whether gender affects these outcomes.

Methods: Pregnant sows were fed a control diet (n=6), a diet with egg yolk (n=5, 350 mg egg yolk powder/kg BW/day), a diet with DHA (n=6, 75 mg DHA/kg BW/day), or a diet with egg yolk plus DHA (n=4) from late gestation through lactation. At weaning, piglets (1-2 male and 1-2 female per sow) underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to acquire resting-state functional MRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The data was analyzed using a linear mixed-effect model to test the treatment effect while controlling for gender as a fixed effect and sow as a random effect.

Results: We analyzed the functional connectivity of the pig brain, including executive, cerebellar, visual, sensorimotor, auditory, default mode, salience, and basal ganglia networks. Our lab previously reported that maternal intake of egg yolk plus DHA increased cerebellar network activity in piglets compared to the control. In addition, perinatal intake of egg yolk plus DHA increased fractional anisotropy in the cerebellum of offspring, whereas it decreased mean diffusivity in the hippocampus. Among the changes in MRI outcomes in piglets from the sows fed the dietary supplementation, a gender effect was observed only on the activity of the salience network. Maternal intake of DHA decreased the salience network activity in male piglets, while it did not alter the network in females. Interestingly, we observed that the salience network activity was higher in males than in their female littermates.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the modulation in maternal nutritional status may alter the brain functional organization of offspring in a gender-specific manner.

Funding Sources: The study was supported by the United States Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture (2020-67017-30839), the Egg Nutrition Center, and the Georgia Experimental Agricultural Station (HATCH, #GEO001002).