Postnatal programming of anxiety and depression related behaviors: maternal care and early inflammation contributions.

LUCCHINA, LUCIANA; PITOSSI, FERNANDO; DEPINO, AMAICHA

Huerta Grande, Cordoba, Argentina

Congreso; I REUNION CONJUNTA DE NEUROCIENCIAS; 2009

Taller Argentino de Neurociencias-Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

The development of the central nervous system and its interactions with endocrine and immune systems can be altered by events occurring early in life. This plasticity is part of an adaptive mechanism in mammals that contributes to the organism survival. However, these changes could lead to disorders in the adulthood. In this context, “programming” is defined as a process in which stimuli that occur early in life have long term effects in the animal physiology and behavior. Previous data show that maternal care and postnatal inflammation can induce long term changes in anxiety and depression related behaviors. Our hypothesis is that both events act on the same neural system. Our aim is to study how these stimuli can interact to program adult behavior. To reach this aim, we caused an acute inflammatory response on postnatal day 3 in mice, injecting different doses of LPS or saline solution. In addition, we used two mice strains (C57BL/6J and BALB/c) to generate a F1 with different mothers, and consequently, different maternal care. We analyzed the adult offspring through a battery of behavioral tests, that evaluate anxiety and depression related behaviors. We analyzed the data using a principal components analysis of the most significant variables of different tests. This analysis gave us more comprehensive information and allowed to identify behavioral profiles. We observed a maternal care effect mostly in males and an inflammation effect mostly in females. We did not observe a strong interaction between maternal care and inflammation in the anxiety or depression components, suggesting that both stimuli are affecting the postnatal programming through different pathways.