Circulating lipid levels are rise sharply after birth, whether a baby is born at term or prematurely. Because fetal circulating lipid levels are typically low, premature birth also means a premature increase in circulating lipid. How does growth of the fetal heart change when lipids rise early?
Proliferative and metabolic maturation happen around the same time in the heart towards the end of term. To what extent these processes are connected is unclear. We gave near-term fetal sheep a week of intravenous Intralipid to see if it affected cardiomyocyte proliferation and maturation.
We found that high circulating lipids in the near-term fetus stimulated cardiomyocyte maturation, likely resulting in fewer cells in the heart. Could this contribute to poor cardiac outcomes of preterm infants, and those exposed to elevated lipids in utero?
Find this paper on Pubmed and in The FASEB Journal.