Copper-carbohydrate interaction in maternal, fetal and neonate rat.

The present study was undertaken to determine whether the same type of interaction between dietary fructose and copper that affects young growing male rats also affects the fetus and the neonate. Female rats were fed copper-deficient (0.6 microgram Cu/g) or adequate (6.0 micrograms/g) diets containing 62% carbohydrate as fructose or starch either for 8 weeks prior to conception, and during mating, gestation and lactation, or just during gestation. Fetuses were killed at days 14, 18 or 21 of gestation and newborn pups were killed at days 0, 10, or 21 postpartum. Regardless of the duration of dietary copper deprivation, feeding the fructose diet deficient in copper during pregnancy resulted in either fetal resorption or mortality of all newborn pups during the first few hours postpartum. In contrast, copper-deficient rats fed the starch-containing diets delivered live pups. However, 40% of their pups died during the first 2 days postpartum and occurred only when dams had been fed the deficient diet for 12-13 weeks. When fed the deficient diet for a total of 3 weeks only, during pregnancy, all copper-deficient rats fed starch delivered live pups and no mortality occurred during the lactation period. Feeding the copper-adequate fructose diet during lactation resulted in a lower hepatic copper concentration of suckling pups compared with starch feeding. Female pups had higher levels of copper and iron than male pups. The data show that fetal resorption and mortality of the neonate pup was dependent on the type of dietary carbohydrate fed to copper-deficient animals during pregnancy.