Dietary Habit-Induced Gynecologic Disorders in Young Female Students -Lessons From Rodent Experiments-

Currently, dieting and breakfast skipping is increasing among young women in Japan. We found that breakfast skipping among female students was accompanied by menstrual disorders, while students who had dieted in the past experienced deterioration in menstrual pains, warning that abnormal eating in young women may induce obstetric and gynecological disorders in the future. We named this concept “adolescent dietary habit-induced obstetric and gynecologic disease (ADHOGD)”. A questionnaire survey showed that pregnant women who had menstrual pain in their youth were at high risk of hypertensive disorders during pregnancy. In rodents, ovulation was suppressed in young female rats whose feeding was limited to the non-active (light) phase. In female mice, feeding stimulation directly regulated the uterine clock gene rhythm. Furthermore, in conditional knockout mice of uterine Bmal1, the fetuses died before delivery, indicating that abnormal uterine clock function cannot maintain fetal development. These findings suggest a mechanism of ADHOGD, in which hunger stress due to inappropriate eating habits during adolescence and young adulthood affects uterine function via clock gene abnormalities, causing placental dysfunction and fetal growth failure during pregnancy. Thus, valid and appropriate rodent experiments are effective to analyze ADHOGD, especially from the aspect of circadian rhythms.