Paternal obesity programs adverse serum lipid and lipoprotein profiles in rat offspring

Abstract

While maternal obesity is a well-established determinant of offspring cardiometabolic health, the contribution of paternal obesity to metabolic programming remains less well defined. This study investigated the impact of paternal obesity on obesity and metabolic health outcomes in male and female offspring using a Sprague Dawley rat model. Male rats were fed either a low-calorie control or high-calorie diet for a 6-week pre-conception period prior to mating with lean, control-fed females. Male and female offspring were assessed at weaning and in adulthood for growth parameters and cardiometabolic indices, including glycemic control, blood lipids and lipoprotein profiles, and liver fat. Paternal obesity was associated with adverse metabolic programming in offspring, characterized by dyslipidemia in both sexes, independent of early-life growth abnormalities or the development of obesity in adulthood. Newly-weaned offspring from obese fathers exhibited elevated total cholesterol in both sexes and increased serum triglycerides in females. In adulthood, offspring demonstrated increased LDL/VLDL-cholesterol, with male offspring displaying a specific increase in apolipoprotein B and a shift toward a more atherogenic lipoprotein subclass distribution, including higher concentrations of small LDL particles compared with male offspring from control fathers. These findings indicate that paternal obesity, even in the absence of postnatal overnutrition or offspring obesity, can program an advanced dyslipidemic phenotype in progeny. Paternal metabolic health may therefore represent an important and previously underappreciated early determinant of cardiometabolic disease risk in offspring.