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On December 8-9, 2014, the Pennington Biomedical Research Center convened a scientific symposium to review the state-of-the-science and future directions for the study of developmental programming of obesity and chronic disease. The objectives of the symposium were to discuss: (i) past and current scientific advances in animal models, population-based cohort studies, and human clinical trials, (ii) the state-of-the-science of epigenetic-based research, and (iii) considerations for future studies.This symposium provided a comprehensive assessment of the state of the scientific field and identified research gaps and opportunities for future research in order to understand the mechanisms contributing to the developmental programming of health and disease.Identifying the mechanisms which cause or contribute to developmental programming of future generations will be invaluable to the scientific and medical community. The ability to intervene during critical periods of prenatal and early postnatal life to promote lifelong health is the ultimate goal. Considerations for future research including the use of animal models, the study design in human cohorts with considerations about the timing of the intrauterine exposure, and the resulting tissue-specific epigenetic signature were extensively discussed and are presented in this meeting summary.

There is an urgent need to adopt standardized nomenclature as it relates to gestational weight gain (GWG), a more uniform approach to calculate it, and hence quantifying adherence to the 2009 Institute of Medicine (IOM) guidelines.This perspective highlights the varying methods used to estimate GWG and discuss the advantages and limitations of each.While these calculations could be argued to have a minimal impact on data at the population level, on the patient level, incorrectly estimating weight at conception can result in misclassification of preconception body mass index (BMI) and assignment of the IOM guidelines which inherently affect the prospective management of weight gain (and potential outcomes) during the current pregnancy.This study recommends that preconception BMI and total GWG be determined objectively and total GWG be adjusted for length of gestation before assessing adherence to the IOM GWG guidelines.