Strong evidence suggests that early-life exposures to suboptimal environmental factors, including those in utero, influence our long-term metabolic health. This has been termed developmental programming. Mounting evidence suggests that the growth and metabolism of male and female fetuses differ. Therefore, sexual dimorphism in response to pre-conception or early-life exposures could contribute to known sex differences in susceptibility to poor metabolic health in adulthood. However, until recently, many studies, especially those in animal models, focused on a single sex, or, often in the case of studies performed during intrauterine development, did not report the sex of the animal at all. In this review, we (a) summarize the evidence that male and females respond differently to a suboptimal pre-conceptional or in utero environment, (b) explore the potential biological mechanisms that underlie these differences and (c) review the consequences of these differences for long-term metabolic health, including that of subsequent generations.

强有力的证据表明，生命早期暴露于次优环境因素（包括子宫内的环境因素）会影响我们的长期代谢健康。这被称为开发编程。越来越多的证据表明，男性和女性胎儿的生长和新陈代谢存在差异。因此，对受孕前或早年暴露的反应的性别二态性可能导致已知的性别差异在成年后对代谢健康不良的易感性。然而，直到最近，许多研究，尤其是动物模型研究，都集中在单一性别上，或者，通常在宫内发育期间进行的研究中，根本没有报告动物的性别。在这篇综述中，我们 (a) 总结了男性和女性对次优的孕前或子宫内环境反应不同的证据，