My research project is investigating the effects of mom’s having had bariatric surgery (specifically, vertical sleeve gastrectomy, or VSG) on their offspring. Clinical and rat trials have shown that the offspring of moms who’ve had VSG tend to have low birth weights (“intrauterine growth restriction”) and have metabolic problems later in life.
My project has two parts. In the first part, which took place over the past 9ish months, we established the mouse models by feeding a group of female mice high-fat diet food, and then gave half regular surgery and half sham surgery (which mimics the trauma/side effects of surgery without the weight loss, etc. effects of the surgery – it serves as a control). There was also a group fed regular chow food who received sham surgery. We then monitored and bred them, and then took data of the offspring to see if the expected effects were observed.
The second phase of the project will investigate a possible treatment that could prevent the negative effects the offspring experience. Studies have shown that levels of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) in the body decrease after VSG, so our plan is to supplement some females’ diets with BCAAs to see if the offspring still experience the usual effects. This phase starts in a few weeks.
My project obviously impacts people who can give birth, particularly those who are overweight and considering bariatric surgery. Because being overweight or obese can cause problems with your reproductive system and make getting and staying pregnant difficult, which then means that having bariatric surgery and then having children is not unheard of and is in fact becoming more and more popular, yet there is still very little research on the subject. As a result, I hope as well as expect that my project will impact that population.
Furthermore, despite recent(ish) measures that require the inclusion of women* in studies with humans, there aren’t any FDA mandates that require the use of female cell lines or female lab animals in pre-human studies, so any research that looks at female mice is beneficial to all women.
*in this case, “women” refers to cisgender women, since I have yet to see any clinical studies that include any trans or non-binary subjects, and my project uses mice