Figure 2

Maternal obesity increases anxiety in female offspring with partial amelioration by diet intervention. Male and female offspring from dams fed control diet (CD) or high fat diet (HFD) throughout gestation and lactation or that underwent diet switch at lactation were examined at P32-35 in Open Field Assay (OFA). (A) Mean ± SEM for distance traveled (one-way ANOVA with post-hoc Fisher’s LSD analysis, male CD/CD versus HFD/HFD **P = 0.0054, CD/CD versus HFD/CD *P = 0.0339). No significant differences were found in female offspring for total distance. (B) Center:total distance ratios for male and female offspring shown as mean ± SEM (one-way ANOVA with post-hoc Fisher’s LSD analysis, female CD/CD versus HFD/HFD *P = 0.0415, CD/CD versus HFD/CD *P = 0.0362). (C) Number of times reared during OFA shown as mean ± SEM number for male and female offspring (one-way ANOVA with post-hoc Fisher’s LSD analysis, male CD/CD versus HFD/HFD *P = 0.0386, HFD/HFD versus CD/HFD *P = 0.0134; female CD/CD versus HFD/HFD **P = 0.0025, HFD/HFD versus CD/HFD **P = 0.003, HFD/HFD versus HFD/CD **P = 0.005). N = 7 to 22 or N = 13 to 30 per condition for males and females, respectively, as indicated in the graph. Abbreviations: P, postnatal day.