Gestational diabetes can leave epigenetic marks: Berenice Palacios

Pregnancy is a period in which the female body experiences very significant changes in its biochemical processes to be able to protect, nourish and help the new being in formation.Some of these changes during pregnancy can influence more than what was thought of the adult life of the person who is to be born.This is indicated by recent studies of a science field called epigenetics, which tries to understand why some genes are expressed or activated and others do not.

Dr. Berenice Palacios González, a researcher at the National Institute of Genomic Medicine (IMENGEN), in Mexico, will receive this year the L'Oreal-Unesco-AMC scholarship women in science to deepen their studies on the way in which a type of diabetes thatIt appears in pregnancy and is called gestational diabetes can generate epigenetic marks that increase the risk of offspring for the development of obesity and type 2 diabetes in adulthood.

In conversation with the chronic readers, the Mexican scientist and professor talks about her biographical journey until she reaches this point.He considers that she is fortunate to have so much support from her family and colleagues, which has brought her closer to the possibility of making an important contribution to society and, at the same time, of training many young people who can deepen this path.

“From a very young age I liked the character of Detective Sherlock Holmes for his restless way to see the problems, for being so intuitive and for the way he addresses the cases.I have always fascinated me, I am made a born researcher.I also like that experience of discovering the answer, as if it were an EurekScientist born in Mexico City and who lived her childhood years in San Antonio Tecomitl, one of the twelve native peoples of the Milpa Alta mayor's office.

“Those years of childhood, which I lived a lot with my grandmother Julia, greatly influenced me.There much of the love I have for life, for knowledge and science, and even my love for the kitchen was generated.If I had to choose a super hero would be my grandmother Julia because I spent a lot of time with her, she was a very focused person, affectionate, gave me a lot of guide, but above all he never questioned the abilities that I had, ”he says in a wayVery generous and endearing with the readers of this newspaper.

Pregnancy and diabetes.

The women's scholarship that is granted in 2020 to Berenice Palacios González and will help to answer the link between the gestation of a baby in an adverse prenatal environment and the development of metabolic diseases in the adult stage, mainly describe theepigenetic modifications that occur in utero.

“The identification of children who were exposed to this adverse intrauterine environment would allow us to early detect those individuals with the greatest risk of developing metabolic diseases in adulthood.It is well known that interventions in early childhood are of crucial importance to reduce risk factors to chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease, ”he says.

Palacios González studied his career in Food Nutrition and Science at the Universidad Iberoamericana.Subsequently, he obtained his degrees of Master's and PhD in Biochemical Sciences of the Faculty of Chemistry at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).He has conducted research in the United States, and currently investigates and form young scientists in the Immeg.

“I think I always wanted to be someone to help society somehow, I didn't want to grow and be someone useless.On the way I havelearned that the quality that I value most in people is empathy because being empathetic you can put yourself in the shoes of the other and try to understand their problem without judging.Try to help them if you can, ”says Berenice Palacios, who very young, along with doctors Ana Bertha Pérez Lizaur and Leticia Marván Laborde, was co -author of the Mexican System of Equivalent Food System, which has more than four editions.

Woman with an integral and multidimensional life shares her taste for surreal and colorful paintings of Salvador Dalí and Wassily Kandinsky, as well as her attraction to wet forests, with smell of land and moss.He also comments that when you can give an award or taste, choose your favorite dessert: hooded for its flavor to piloncillo, green tomato and cheese.

For more than a decade, one of its lines of research is focused on gestational diabetes and the search for what is called "biomarkers", that is, signs of a disease that occur in advance.For example, he has worked in search of biomarkers who, from the first weeks of pregnancy or before the glucose tolerance tests are performed, facilitate identifying whether the patient will present gestational diabetes.

The scholarship will help the purchase of essays for the determination of insulin and leptin in dry blood, which require minimal training by health personnel, lower cost than venous puncture, acceptability of parents and children, processing requirementsInsignifying, low biological risk, as well as the ease of storage and transport of filter paper cards.The investigation will last two years, however, she hopes to have results within a shorter period.

"What is the best advice you have received?"

—That decisions in life you take them with the elements you have at that time and you have to advance with them.That helps us understand why we take a path and not regret - concludes Dr. Berenice Palacios González.

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It is a very interesting topic.I have read the book "The 6 months that the world can change: and the future of my son" that talk about how the mother's feeding can contribute to the baby is born with predisposition to metabolic diseases.During the last months of pregnancy the baby's pancreas begins to work but is still immature.High glucose levels at that stage make the pancreas of these children work in excess and are larger than normal and that predisposes them to obesity and type 2 diabetes in the future.And these glucose levels above normal occur especially when there are gestational diabetes, but also in pregnant women who eat many sweets and refined flours.What proposes in the book to reduce the risk to the maximum is to base the diet on food with few hydrates, especially without sugars and flours.And this makes a lot of sense since just in the last half of pregnancy the insulin resistance that occurs makes these foods well and since they do not provide any essential nutrient because it makes sense to eliminate them.

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