Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

OSTEOARTHRITIS

How can parental obesity promote OA across generations?

Obesity promotes osteoarthritis (OA) through complex and incompletely understood biomechanical, metabolic and inflammatory factors. New data in mice add to this complexity by showing that eating a high-fat diet increases the risk of OA for two generations of offspring, raising questions about disease mechanisms and future treatment strategies.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: High-fat diet developmentally programmes female mice to be susceptible to osteoarthritis.

References

  1. Berenbaum, F., Griffin, T. M. & Liu-Bryan, R. Metabolic regulation of inflammation in osteoarthritis. Arthritis Rheumatol. 69, 9–21 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Meulenbelt, I. M. et al. The first international workshop on the epigenetics of osteoarthritis. Connect. Tissue Res. 58, 37–48 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Harasymowicz, N. S. et al. Intergenerational transmission of diet-induced obesity, metabolic imbalance, and osteoarthritis in mice. Arthritis Rheumatol. https://doi.org/10.1002/art.41147 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Sureshchandra, S., Marshall, N. E. & Messaoudi, I. Impact of pregravid obesity on maternal and fetal immunity: fertile grounds for reprogramming. J. Leukoc. Biol. 106, 1035–1050 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Culemann, S. et al. Locally renewing resident synovial macrophages provide a protective barrier for the joint. Nature 572, 670–675 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Devlin, M. J. & Bouxsein, M. L. Influence of pre- and peri-natal nutrition on skeletal acquisition and maintenance. Bone 50, 444–451 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Chen, J.-R. et al. Maternal obesity impairs skeletal development in adult offspring. J. Endocrinol. 239, 33–47 (2018).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Boyle, K. E. et al. Mesenchymal stem cells from infants born to obese mothers exhibit greater potential for adipogenesis: the Healthy Start BabyBUMP Project. Diabetes 65, 647–659 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Schott, E. M. et al. Targeting the gut microbiome to treat the osteoarthritis of obesity. JCI Insight 3, 421 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. van Otterdijk, S. D. & Michels, K. B. Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in mammals: how good is the evidence? FASEB J. 30, 2457–2465 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The work of T.M.G. is supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute on Aging (R01AG049058) and a Merit Award from the Department of Veterans Affairs (I01BX004666). T.M.G. is a member of the Reynolds Oklahoma Center on Aging and maintains an adjunct Associate Professor role in The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Department of Physiology. The work of J.E.F. is supported by grants from the NIH National Institute of Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R24 DK090964, NIH-R56DK114711 and NIH-1UG3OD023248).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Timothy M. Griffin.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

T.M.G. declares that he receives National Institutes of Health research support for obesity-related osteoarthritis research. J.E.F. declares that he is a consultant to the scientific advisory board of Janssen Pharmaceuticals.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Griffin, T.M., Friedman, J.E. How can parental obesity promote OA across generations?. Nat Rev Rheumatol 16, 129–130 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41584-020-0369-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Version of record:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41584-020-0369-5

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing