INTERGENERATIONAL REPERCUSSIONS OF VITAMIN D COMBINED WITH INSULIN IN RATS WITH PRE-GESTATIONAL DIABETES

• Grant number: 22/15499-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): December 01, 2023
• Effective date (End): February 28, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Medicine - Maternal and Child Health
• Principal Investigator: Débora Cristina Damasceno
• Grantee: Vinícius Soares Barco
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina (FMB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Botucatu. Botucatu , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Maternal and environmental factors act at the beginning of life and can have repercussions on the vulnerability to diseases and on the health process in the individual's adult life or in animals. Due to the inconclusive findings in the literature regarding the treatment of diabetes with vitamin D, the purpose of this study is to verify whether treatment with insulin, associated or not with vitamin D, will influence the synthesis and secretion of insulin and proteins related to the insulin signaling pathway in diabetic rats at the end of pregnancy. Furthermore, we intend to verify whether this therapeutic strategy before conception and during pregnancy in diabetic rats will bring benefits in the health process of their offspring in adult life. Thus, the objective of this project will be to evaluate whether diabetic rats treated with insulin, associated or not with vitamin D, will present less compromising repercussions in the pancreas and skeletal muscles and if their descendants will be free of diseases related to insulin resistance and diabetes in adult life. For this, non-diabetic and diabetic Sprague-Dawley rats will be used, being treated with insulin, vitamin D or both before and during pregnancy. The mother rats will be analyzed at the end of pregnancy (21st day of pregnancy) and their female offspring in adulthood (120 days of life) in samples of blood, pancreas and skeletal muscle for analysis of the presence or absence of diabetes and insulin resistance . All procedures were authorized by the Committee on Ethics in the Use of Animals (CEUA) of our institution. P < 0.05 will be considered as statistical significance limit.