著者
Kazuhiro YAMADA Nozomi MAEDA Junko NOGUCHI Hideaki YAMADA Emi MORINAGA Hitomi YATAKE Yuji YAMAMOTO Tadahiro TADOKORO Tetsunori KAWATA
出版者
Center for Academic Publications Japan
雑誌
Journal of Nutritional Science and Vitaminology (ISSN:03014800)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.59, no.3, pp.238-242, 2013 (Released:2013-07-25)
参考文献数
23
被引用文献数
3 5

The influence of maternal vitamin B12 malnutrition on testicular development of offspring was examined using soy protein-based B12-deficient diets with or without 0.5% DL-methionine supplementation. Dams were fed the B12-deficient diet throughout gestation and lactation, whereas dams in a control group were fed a control diet which contained cyanocobalamin in the B12-deficient diet without methionine. Offspring born to dams fed the B12-deficient diet without methionine showed poor testicular development, e.g. decreased numbers of seminiferous tubules containing healthy spermatocytes and a high ratio of apoptotic cells per all germ cells. The abnormality was rarely observed in the group fed the B12-deficient diet with methionine. It was likely that the testicular abnormality of offspring was caused by B12-deficiency post partum and was prevented by the methionine supplementation. These observations suggested that maternal B12 nutritional status during the pre-weaning period is quite important for spermatogenesis of male offspring and that the requirement of B12 for testicular development is to produce active B12-dependent methionine synthase.