The present study was designed to evaluate the short and long term influence of the postnatal environment on the food intake, body weight and adiposity of normal and genetically hyperphagic rats.
Cross-fostering and maternal separation are widely used to study the influence of early postnatal environment on rat pups [ 35- 39].
Indeed, a rich literature suggests widespread effects of the prenatal and postnatal environment on the developing brain (for reviews see [44], [45]).
The contribution of an obesogenic postnatal environment to later body composition changes becomes clear when examining the results of the adoption on the LETO strain.
Accumulating epidemiological evidence points to the long-term influence of prenatal and early postnatal environments on adult health.
Together, these epigenetic modifications potentially allow the prenatal or postnatal environment to influence the organism in the absence of genetic alterations.
Postnatal measures are also needed to capture the complex interplay linking the pre- and postnatal environment to adult health.
One would argue that offspring of obese mothers would be "matched" to an obesogenic postnatal environment, but offspring of obese mothers display metabolic disorders similar in nature to that observed for maternal undernutrition in the absence of further nutritional insults.
The relative roles of the intrauterine and postnatal environment in the persistence of DNA methylation changes associated with maternal smoking are yet to be determined.
