Bad health starts before birth says Professor

Obesity, heart disease and type-2 diabetes probably all have their origins in the womb, says a paediatric researcher.

Professor Peter Gluckman, who has been involved in some of New Zealand's biggest advances in birth research, said increasing evidence suggested that diseases such as obesity were not caused by poor eating in adulthood or even genetic make-up, but by the foetal environment.

"That sets you up for life and determines whether you're more or less likely to get diabetes or high blood pressure," he said.

Professor Gluckman, who heads the Liggins Institute and the National Research Centre for Growth and Development in Auckland, believes the foetus is programmed by it mother's nutritional and stress environment.

By picking up on cues through its food supply and endocrinal signals, the foetus adapts its biology in anticipation of being born into the same environment.

"Ostensibly the foetus takes the information it gets from its mother and says 'I'm going to live in a good environment or a bad environment' and sets up the biology for the rest of its life," Professor Gluckman said.

The foetus' prediction sets it up to have diabetes as an adult - a biological destiny that could not be changed in adulthood.

"You can teach people to eat better and exercise more, but it doesn't change it. You have to change how the foetus determines its future."

Maternal health and nutrition could pre-determine a foetus' adult health, so public health money should be spent on the beginning of life and not on the country's ageing population.

"But nobody wants to invest in pregnancy and children now for something that happens in 25 years," Professor Gluckman said.

Yet data from Finland showed if babies were born with a normal weight and not allowed to get fat as infants, the incidence of heart disease could be reduced 50 per cent and the incidence of diabetes by 60 per cent.

"Every other country in the world is taking notice of this except New Zealand," Professor Gluckman said.

Researchers at the Liggins Institute produced evidence this year suggesting that a mother's diet before and around the time of conception could profoundly influence the length of pregnancy, and that a missing nutrient in the diet might be to blame for about 40 per cent of New Zealand's 3500 premature births every year.

Type 2 diabetes

* About 105,000 people in New Zealand have type 2 diabetes. Nearly the same number are believed to have it but are undiagnosed.

* People over 40 who are overweight or inactive - especially Maori, Pacific Island or Asian people - are more at risk, as are those with a family history of the disease.

* About 85 per cent of people with type 2 diabetes manage it with diet and oral medication. The rest require some form of insulin therapy taken by injection.

- NZPA