Professor Sir Peter Gluckman FRS, a leading investigator at the Liggins Institute, has received the David Barker Medal at the Sixth World Congress on the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease held in Santiago, Chile this week. This is only the second time that the prestigious medal for outstanding leadership and scientific contributions in the field of ‘developmental origins’ has been awarded by the international learned society.
Professor Gluckman was the inaugural Chair of the International Society for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) which was set up to promote research into the links between early human development and disease in later life.
This area of medical research stems from observations made more than 20 years ago by British medical scientist Professor David Barker FRS that children who had a low birth weight were more likely to suffer from coronary heart disease in middle age. Scientists in the DOHaD network have extended what is popularly known as the Barker Hypothesis to establish clear links between the nutrition that a baby receives in the womb and its health in later life. The Society now has nearly 500 members spread over more than 40 countries in the developed and developing world.
Professor Gluckman and investigators at the Liggins Institute have been at the forefront of research which has unravelled the processes through which the developing fetus takes cues from the levels of hormones and nutrients in the womb to set the activity levels of key metabolic genes. These settings determine how the baby will utilise the nutrients it receives in postnatal and adult life. So, babies that are poorly nourished in the womb will predict a world where food is scarce and set their metabolism to conserve energy and store fat. Problems arise when the prediction is untrue and food (particularly food high in fat) is readily available but the child’s metabolism is already programmed for adult obesity and conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
Gluckman has co-authored a popular science book Mismatch- why our world no longer fits our bodies (Oxford University Press 2006, 2008) to draw public attention to the predicted explosion of lifestyle diseases as the gap between pre- and postnatal nutrition widens in many countries. He has used his appointments to international health organisations to advocate for better maternal education, nutrition and health care as effective measures to stem the rising costs of chronic adult diseases.
Liggins Institute Director Professor Wayne Cutfield congratulated his predecessor saying, "Peter’s energy and dedication have been instrumental in achieving widespread recognition of the fetal origins paradigm within the medical community.
"Our research at the Liggins reinforces the importance of good maternal nutrition for a healthy start to life. Currently, we are investigating ways to predict, at birth, whether children are at risk of diseases such as diabetes and how this programming can be reversed."
