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Effects of Prenatal and Chronic Undernutrition on Aging and Survival in Rats¹

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Department of Biological Chemistry, Mental Retardation Research Center, and Brain Research Institute, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA 90024

The effect on aging and survival of mild ( of ad lib) chronic prenatal and postnatal undernutrition over 10 generations, or prenatal undernutrition only has been studied in rats. Both regimes of undernutrition used decreased body weights of animals as compared to the controls. Both undernourished groups had lower cholesterol levels and tumor incidence than the controls. The effects on survival depended not only on the time period of undernutrition but also on the age of the animals examined: chronic undernutrition resulted in lower survival of young adult animals (4–8 months) but higher survival than the controls in old age. Prenatal undernutrition only had no effect on young adult animals, gave higher survival than the controls at ages 8–18 months but considerably lower survival than controls in the old age: the underdevelopment of vital organs whose cells proliferate only before birth might have been the cause of such decreased longevity.

KEY WORDS: • prenatal undernutrition • chronic undernutrition • aging • aging and nutrition • aging and survival • longevity and undernutrition

¹ This study was supported by Grants HD-05615, HD-08927 and AG-00162 from the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Public Health Service. Computing assistance was obtained from the Health Sciences Computing Facility, UCLA, sponsored by NIH Special Research Resources Grant RR-3. A short abstract of a part of this work has appeared: Zamenhof, S. & van Marthens, E. (1981) Effects of prenatal and postnatal undernutrition on the life span and aging of rats. Abstracts, XII Int. Congress of Nutrition. P. 102.

Manuscript received 21 October 1981.