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Published on: June 10, 2013
Prenatal restraint stress affects early neurobehavioral response and oxidative stress in mice pups
Oumaima Essaidi1, Meriem Laaroussi1, Hafsa Malqui2
1Biological Engineering Laboratory, Faculty of Sciences and Techniques, Sultan Moulay Sliman University, Beni Mellal, Morocco.
Insights
Prenatal stress in mice negatively impacts maternal behaviors and causes significant neurodevelopmental impairments in offspring. These include altered reflexes, learning deficits, and changes in brain chemistry, leading to lifelong health issues.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Biology
- Maternal-Fetal Medicine
Background:
- Prenatal stress (PS) poses risks to maternal and fetal health, altering development and increasing susceptibility to lifelong health problems, including mental illness.
- Restraint stress is a common method to induce prenatal stress in animal models without causing lasting harm.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the specific neurodevelopmental and behavioral consequences of prenatal restraint stress (PRS) in Swiss albino mice.
- To identify physiological changes in dams and offspring resulting from PRS exposure during gestation.
Main Methods:
- Pregnant Swiss albino mice were subjected to daily restraint stress from embryonic day 7.5 until delivery.
- Maternal behaviors (nursing, licking, grooming, nesting, pup retrieval) and offspring neurodevelopmental reflexes (righting reflex, cliff avoidance, negative geotaxis, swimming) were assessed.
- Biochemical markers including Malondialdehyde (MDA) and Acetylcholinesterase (AchE) activity were measured in offspring brains.
Main Results:
- Prenatal stress significantly reduced maternal weight gain and impaired crucial maternal behaviors like nursing, licking, and grooming.
- Offspring exposed to PRS exhibited significant neurobehavioral deficits, including delayed reflex development and impaired motor skills.
- Increased MDA activity and decreased AchE activity were observed in the brains of stressed pups, indicating oxidative stress and altered neurotransmission.
Conclusions:
- Prenatal restraint stress induces profound and lasting neurodevelopmental impairments in offspring.
- These impairments manifest as altered maternal care, significant neurobehavioral deficits, and biochemical changes in the developing brain.
- The findings highlight the critical vulnerability of the developing brain to prenatal stress, with potential implications for long-term mental health.
Abstract:
Prenatal stress (PS), in both humans and animals, presents a potential risk to the mother and her fetus throughout gestation. PS is always associated with physiological changes that alter embryonic development and predispose the individual to lifelong health problems, including susceptibility to mental illness. This study aims to identify the harmful effects of prenatal restraint stress (PRS), commonly employed to induce stress painlessly and without any lasting debilitation during gestation. This stress is applied to pregnant Swiss albino mice from E7.5 to delivery for three hours daily. Our results show that PS affects dams' weight gain during the gestational period; moreover, the PS dams prefer passive nursing, exhibit a lower percentage of licking and grooming, and impair other maternal behaviors, including nesting and pup retrieval. Concerning the offspring, this stress induces neurobehavioral impairments, including a significant increase in the time of recovery of the young stressed pups in the surface righting reflex, the latency to avoid the cliff in the cliff avoidance test, longer latencies to accomplish the task in negative geotaxis, and a lower score in swimming development. These alterations were accompanied by increased Malondialdehyde activity (MDA) at PND17 and 21 and downregulation of AchE activity in the whole brain of pups on postnatal days 7 and 9. These findings demonstrated that PS causes deleterious neurodevelopmental impairments that can alter various behaviors later in life.
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