Repeated early maternal separation and cold stress

CB RODRÍGUEZ; AE SALATINO; M ODEON; GB ACOSTA

Tandil, provincia de Buenos Aires

Congreso; XL Reunión Anual Sociedad Argentina de Farmacología Experimental; 2008

SAFE

Early life events have profound consequences in growth and development. The aim of this study was to investigate the consequences of repeated early maternal separation and exposed to cold stress on adult brain on GABAergic function and determinate whether the desensitization to maternal separation was an age-specific. Rats´ pups were separated from their mother plus cold exposure (4°C) for 1 h at postnatal day (PD) 5, 7 and 13 during 20 days. These animals were allowed a 30 days recovery period until adulthood. The rats were killed by decapitation and collecting trunk blood. Frontal cortex (FC) and hippocampus (HIC) were dissected. We studied GABA uptake, corticosterone levels and GAT-1 expression by western blot. Repeated stress decreased GABA uptake on FC and HIC significantly at PD5 as also the levels of corticosterone. While GAT-1 expression increased at PD13 on FC. These preliminary results support the notion that early life environmental manipulations have an influence on hypothalamic-pituitary- adrenal (HPA) axis and alter the expression of plasticity related neuronal proteins.