Early-life high-fat diet accelerates the development of vagal satiation signaling and predisposes females to overconsumption.

Early-life high-fat diet causes a precocious maturation of vagal satiation signaling in mice, with adult females showing increased overconsumption of energy-dense foods.

• Why it matters: Understanding how early nutrition influences the development of neural pathways controlling eating behavior is crucial for addressing obesity and related diseases. Limited knowledge exists on how early high-fat exposure affects vagal afferent neurons involved in satiation.
• What they did: Researchers compared mice reared on a control chow diet to those on a high-fat diet from early life, analyzing vagal responses to cholecystokinin and transcriptomic changes in the nodose ganglion, along with adult feeding behaviors.
• The result: HFD EARLY mice exhibited a premature maturation of the vagal satiation response and lasting changes in orosensory processing, with adult females consuming more lipid and calorie-dense diets, indicating sex-specific vulnerability to overconsumption.