[Nutritional environment in utero and development of obesity].

Obesity and metabolic syndrome have been acutely increasing worldwide with far-reaching health care and economic implications. The steep increase of these diseases' patients suggests us that environmental and life-style influences, rather than genetic causes, are fueling the epidemic. The developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) hypothesis has highlighted the relation between the poor nutritional state of the periconceptional, embryonic, fetal, and early infant phases and the subsequent metabolic disorders in later life. Especially newly constructed epigenetic modification has persisted for long time and induces metabolic disruption. Some experimental animal studies are disclosing developmental programming for diseases are reversible by nutritional or targeted therapeutic interventions during the time of developmental plasticity.