Prenatal stress produces sex-specific changes in depression-like behavior in rats: implications for increased vulnerability in females (original) (raw)
Related papers
2018
The foetal brain is highly susceptible to stress in late pregnancy, with lifelong effects of stress on physiology and behaviour. The present study aimed to determine the physiological and behavioural effects of prenatal stress during the prepubertal period of female and male rats. We subjected pregnant Sprague-Dawley rats to a restraint stress protocol from gestational day 14 to 21, a critical period for foetal brain susceptibility to stress effects. Male and female offspring were subsequently assessed at postnatal day 24 for anxiety-and depressive-like behaviours, as well as spontaneous social interaction. We also assessed maternal behaviours and 2 stress markers: basal vs acute-evoked stress levels of serum corticosterone and body weight gain. Prenatal stress did not affect the maternal behaviour, whereas both female and male offspring had higher body weight gain. On the other hand, lower levels of corticosterone after acute stress stimulation, as well as anxiety-and depressive-like behaviours, were only evident in stressed males compared to control males. These results suggest that prenatal stress induced sex-specific effects on hypothalamic-pituitary- adrenal (HPA) axis activity and on behaviour during prepuberty. The HPA axis of prenatally stressed male rats was less active compared to control males, and they were also more anxious and experienced depressive-like behaviours. These results are useful with respect to studying the neurobiological basis of childhood depression at a preclinical level.
Prenatal stress effects on emotion regulation differ by genotype and sex in prepubertal rats
Developmental Psychobiology, 2013
Behavioral effects of different prenatal stress (PNS) schedules were examined in prepubertal ''depressive/anxious-like'' WKY and control Wistar rats. Pregnant dams received 1 hr daily restraint stress on gestational days 14-20 or on 7 randomly scheduled days, or remained undisturbed. Offspring were tested during postnatal days 29-35 in social play, forced swim-test, open field, and novelty tests. PNS induced an increase in anxiety-like behaviors in WKY, particularly in females, while seemingly reducing depressive-like behavior in the swim test. However, very high post-stress corticosterone levels were found, suggesting that the reductions in swim-test immobility reflect an extremely over-responsive HPA axis, rather than normalization in stress reactivity leading to a less depressive-like profile. In Wistar, PNS produced weight loss, hyperactivity and risk taking behavior, especially in males. The results support the importance of the environment during gestation and its interaction with sex and genetics on longterm anxiety and depressive like behaviors. ß 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol
Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science, 2015
There has been an increasing importance of studies that link sex to stress coping processes. Recently, we reported that male and female Wistar rats responded differently to prenatal stress (PS) under basal conditions. The aim of the present study was to determine the influence of sex on behaviour and coping strategies, as an effect of gestational adversity in rats that were exposed to an uncontrollable stressor. Once the animals reached adulthood, the offspring from stressed/nonstressed dams were subjected or not to antidepressant treatment with Sertraline. After that, they were exposed to a single inescapable shock (IS) session, in which the rats were further tested for escape behaviour along 10 days, as a model of learned helplessness (LH). In prenatally stressed animals after the IS, behavioural differences appeared in a sex specific manner. Males proved to be more susceptible to the adverse context than females, exhibiting behavioural despair in a large percentage of the cases. Surprisingly, PS did not affect shock escape failure, but did affect learning performance in a sex dependent manner. In females, PS led them to learn to avoid shocks, learning better than controls, and by contrast, PS males did not learn to avoid shocks and displayed some signs of anhedonia. Sertraline did not help animals to avoid shocks, but helped them to escape from it. Our data indicate the existence of sex dependent behavioural differences in PS animals when facing an uncontrollable stress situation, in which the changes induced by PS were not only different, but opposite between sexes.
Sex-dependent Differences of Emotional Status in a Rat Model of Prenatal Stress
Proceedings of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Untoward events during pregnancy negatively affect offspring mental development. We investigated sex-dependent differences of emotional problems in offspring with a history of prenatal stress (PNS). Female rats demonstrated decreased anxiety-like behaviour in comparison to male controls, shown in the light-dark test. Male and female offspring of prenatally stressed mothers were characterized by higher anxiety levels, compared to unstressed controls. PNS induced depression-like behaviour in both sexes without differences among them, indicated with decreased intake of sweet solution in the sucrose consumption tests and increased immobility time spent in the forced swim test. Control females showed higher plasma corticosteroid (CORT) concentrantions after acute stress and decreased recovery (120 min after the stressor) than control males. Both male and female PNS-offspring were with elevated levels of CORT in the plasma, which remained high 120 min after application of the stressogenic...
Stress during gestation induces lasting effects on emotional reactivity of the dam rat
Behavioural Brain Research, 2004
Human and animal studies indicate that repeated stress during pregnancy can produce long-term biological and behavioural disorders in the offspring. In contrast, although maternal stress is supposed to induce an increase of maternal anxiety, few studies have been conducted to demonstrate it. Therefore, in the present study we examined the emotional reactivity in stressed (chronic restraint stress applied 3× 45 min per day during the last week of pregnancy) and unstressed females rats after the weaning of their pups. Restraint stress procedure reduced the body weight gain both during pregnancy and up to four weeks after the stress period. Stressed dams presented a reduction of exploration and of corticosterone levels when exposed to a novel environment (25 and 49 days post-stress). They spent less time in the open arms of the elevated plus-maze (26 days post-stress). Finally, they showed no increase in the time spent in immobility after a second exposure to the forced-swim test (35-36 days post-stress). In the contrary, such differences were not observed when the chronic stress procedure was applied on virgin females. Overall, our results show that, chronic stress during gestation induces lasting effects on emotional reactivity of the dams, thus indicating that gestation constitutes a critical period in the vulnerability to stressful events also for the mother.
Stress, 2019
Prenatal stressful events have long-lasting consequences on behavioral responses of offspring. While the effects of gestational and maternal stress have been extensively studied on psychological alterations in the progeny, little is known about effects of each parent's pre-conception life events on emotional responses in offspring. Here, the effect of maternal and/or paternal pre-conception stress was investigated on anxiogenic responses of offspring. Male and female adult rats were subjected to predatory stress (contactless exposure to a cat for 1 þ 1 h per day) for 50 (male, n: 12) and 15 (female, n: 24) consecutive days; controls were not exposed. After the stress procedure, the control and stressed rats were mated to create four types of breeding pairs: control female/control male, stressed female/control male, control female/stressed male, and stressed female/stressed male. On postnatal days 30-31, the offspring were tested on the elevated plus maze and plasma corticosterone concentration was measured. Half of the pups were exposed to acute predatory stress before the elevated plus maze test. In most subgroups, corticosterone and anxiety-like behaviors in the offspring with both or only one parent exposed to pre-gestational stress increased compared to their control counterparts. However, under acute stress conditions, a different sex-dependent pattern of anxiety responses emerged. The combined effects of maternal and paternal stress were not additive. Hence, individual offspring behaviors can be influenced by the former life stress experiences of either parent. Incorporation of genetic and epigenetic aspects in development of neurobehavioral abnormalities and reprograming of the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal axis may contribute to this phenomenon. LAY SUMMARY Early life stress (including during pregnancy) is known to have long-lasting effects on offspring, including emotional behaviors. Whether individual anxiety behaviors can be influenced by stress experiences of each parent even before a pregnancy is less well-understood. Our findings from this study on rats exposed to predator stress before mating suggest that maternal or paternal adult life events prior to pregnancy can lead to maladaptive behavior in their offspring later in life.
Effects of Chronic Prenatal Restraint Stress on Anxiety in Post Weaned Male and Female Wistar Rats
Cherian et al. Summary Stress in adulthood can have a profound effect on physiology and behavior, but the extent to which prolonged maternal stress affect brain function of offspring when they are adult remains primarily unknown. Controversies exist in literature regarding sexual dimorphism in the effects of prenatal stress on the postnatal cognitive behavioral development. To investigate the effect of prenatal stress on locomotor, exploratory and emotional development, pregnant rats of Wistar strain were subjected to restraint stress from E11 till delivery. Male and female pups born to these stressed rats were subjected to open field test on 21 st day of postnatal life. Results were compared with rats of the same age and sex born to control mothers, which were not stressed. The results showed that prenatal maternal restraint stress affected both male and female offsprings during young age. These results suggests that prolonged maternal stress leads to long lasting malfunction of th...