Maternal Exercise Effects Cancer Risk in Offspring? Scientists Attempt to Study
As long as a child is in the mother's womb, everything that a mother does, eats, or even thinks makes a lot of difference who or how her child will turn out to be. On similar grounds, scientists from the University of Kentucky initiated a study to see if during pregnancy a mother's habit of exercising cuts down the risk of cancer in her child.
The researchers, for the study will be using animal models, to test how voluntary exercise during pregnancy effects chemical-induced carcinogenesis in the offspring and will also look for potential mechanisms for long-lasting stress protection, Medical Xpress reports.
The new study will be follow up of a small pilot study conducted earlier in mice which revealed that offspring born to exercised dams had an improved glucose regulation and enhanced stress protection when compared to the offspring of dams which did not exercise.
According to researcher Kevin Pearson, an assistant professor for the UK Graduate Center for Nutritional Sciences, the aim of the study is to find relatively simple, short-term interventions for the mother, like a regular exercise regime during pregnancy that could elicit protection against many common diseases in her offspring.
"The benefits of exercise for individuals have been studied extensively-everyone knows that exercise is good for you," Pearson said. "But what if it not only helped you, but also your children? We think there's a high probability that parents will stay committed to a short-term exercise routine during pregnancy if we can show that it can provide a lifetime of beneficial effects for their sons and daughters."
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