Does stress during pregnancy affect offspring’s metabolic health?

Physical activity during pregnancy enhances the metabolic health of offspring, but new research in mice indicates that prenatal stress blunts these benefits, at least in male offspring. The findings are published in The FASEB Journal.

The study also found that maternal stress may have this effect by altering signaling pathways involving corticosteroids—hormones that regulate energy balance and other physiological processes—in brown fat tissue in offspring. This type of beneficial fat burns energy to produce heat, unlike white fat, which stores it.

The research identifies a stress-exercise interaction that may influence offspring metabolic programming through tissue-specific regulation of corticosteroid pathways.

“This work provides a framework for understanding how psychosocial factors may modify exercise‐based interventions during pregnancy and highlights the importance of considering maternal stress context in studies of developmental metabolic programming,” the authors wrote.

Reference:

F. T.Yang, J. V.Esteves, L. A.Baer, et al., “Distinct Effects of Maternal Stress and Exercise on Offspring Metabolic Health,” The FASEB Journal40, no. 8 (2026): e71742, https://doi.org/10.1096/fj.202600159R.