Little is known about the gestational age (GA) dependent content, composition and intrauterine accretion rates of fatty acids (FA) in fetal white adipose tissue (WAT).To acquire this information, we collected abdominal subcutaneous WAT samples from 40 preterm and term fetuses. Their GA ranged from 22 to 43 weeks. FA were expressed as mg/g wet WAT and g/100g FA (g%). Intrauterine WAT FA accretion rates were estimated for appropriate (AGA) and large (LGA) for gestational age infants.From 25 to 40 weeks gestation, saturated-FA (SAFA) increased from 83 to 298mg/g WAT and monounsaturated-FA (MUFA) from 83 to 226mg/g WAT, while polyunsaturated-FA (PUFA) increased insignificantly from 18.0 to 23.2mg/g WAT. As percentages of total FA, SAFA increased from 46 to 55g%, MUFA decreased from 44 to 41g%, and PUFA from 10.3 to 4.26g%. Docosahexaenoic (DHA) and arachidonic acid (AA) accretion rates in WAT during the 3rd trimester for AGA infants were 88 and 193mg/week, respectively. Contemporaneous DHA and AA accretion rates for 4500g LGA infants were 184 and 402mg/week, respectively. Compared to the whole 3rd trimester, increment rates during the last 5 weeks of gestation were about 2-fold higher.FA accretion rates, notably those of DHA and AA, may be important for designing nutritional regiments for preterm infants. The current WAT-DHA and WAT-AA accretion rates are considerably lower than previously reported in the literature.