Exercise During Pregnancy May Ensure Better Heart Health for Child

A woman who exercises during pregnancy may be setting up her child for greater vascular health, a new study found.

Current guidelines for pregnant women recommend 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity most if not all of the days of the week, though not all physicians are overwhelmingly convinced of its benefit, the authors of the study lament.

Published in the journal Experimental Physiology, the results offer new evidence that maternal exercise during pregnancy offers an influential programming stimulus in the arteries of the child, which could impact his or her's susceptibility to cardiovascular disease later in life.

"Our study was the first to demonstrate that maternal exercise during pregnancy significantly impacts vascular function in adult offspring," said Dr. Sean Newcomer of California State University, San Marcos and Dr. Martin Bahls of Universitätsmedizin Greifswald Germany.

The duo looked at pigs for the report given their human-like responses to physical activity and because they can be trained to complete physical regimens.

"Swine are considered a superior animal model for cardiovascular studies compared to rodents," they said.

The pregnant pigs ran on the treadmill for 20-45 minutes five days a week in reflection of recommendations by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. The researchers then evaluated vascular functioning in the offspring's femoral arteries using in vitro methods.

"We are only starting to understand how exercise during gestation influences offspring adult health and disease," they wrote. "Results like ours may help to create guidelines enabling women to make the best decisions for them and their children by providing evidence based health choices."

Physical activity may act through multiple pathways which depend on type, duration, intensity and frequency of the exercise regimen. Furthermore, it is essential that future research investigates the coronary circulation and also establishes what impact these reported changes in vascular function in the offspring have on cardiovascular disease susceptibility."