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Influence of maternal malnutrition on pituitary-adrenal responsiveness to offspring

S G Wiener1, W P Smotherman, S Levine

  • 1Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

Physiology & Behavior
|December 1, 1976
PubMed

Maternal pituitary-adrenal responsiveness to noxious and pup-produced stimuli was investigated in rat mothers fed low protein or control diets. While low protein (LP) mothers did not differ from control (C) dams in basal secretion of corticosterone or in their response to ether or novelty stress, the LP mother's response to pups which had been either handled (H) or shocked (S) differed from controls. This responsiveness to pups depended on both the mother's and pup's nutritional condition. While control pups elicited a differential pattern of pituitary-adrenal response which depended on pup treatment (H/S) from both C and LP mothers, malnourished pups were not capable of eliciting this differential pattern from either type of dam. Overall, malnourished pups elicited less responsiveness. In addition, low protein mothers displayed a decreasing responsiveness toward malnourished pups as lactation proceeded. Thus, this physiological evidence confirms behavioral observations indicating that both the mother's and pup's nutritional condition play a role in determining mother-infant relationships.

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