
94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
REVIEW article
Front. Hematol.
Sec. Hematopoiesis and Stem Cells
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frhem.2025.1575143
The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Maternal obesity, often linked to the consumption of a high-fat Western-style diet (WSD), poses significant risks to both maternal and fetal health. This review explores the impact of maternal obesity on fetal hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs), highlighting how metabolic and inflammatory shifts in the maternal environment affect HSPC proliferation, differentiation, and long-term immune system development. Maternal obesity leads to hormonal imbalances, increased inflammatory cytokines, placental insufficiency, and altered nutrient availability that disrupt normal HSPC function, potentially predisposing offspring to immune dysfunction, metabolic disorders, and cardiovascular diseases later in life. Notably, maternal obesity skews HSPC differentiation toward the myeloid lineage, which can impair adaptive immune responses and increase the risk of autoimmune diseases and infections. Furthermore, maternal diet-driven epigenetic and transcriptional reprogramming of fetal HSPCs exacerbates chronic inflammation, reinforcing a pro-inflammatory phenotype in downstream progeny that persists into postnatal stages. The review also emphasizes the need for further research to clarify the mechanisms underlying these effects across different species and developmental stages, as well as the potential for targeted interventions to mitigate the adverse impacts of maternal obesity on fetal hematopoiesis and lifelong health outcomes.
Keywords: bone marrow adipocytes, Fetal Development, Hematopoiesis, Hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, maternal obesity, western-style diet, nonhuman primates, programming
Received: 12 Feb 2025; Accepted: 26 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Varlamov. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Oleg Varlamov, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, 97239, Oregon, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Research integrity at Frontiers
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.