CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Preterm delivery (PD) is the leading cause of neonatal mortality and contributes to delayed physical and cognitive development in children. At present, there is no efficient therapy to prevent preterm labour. Our group developed a murine model of preterm labour, induced by injections of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) that induces a 100% incidence of PD. In this model we assayed new therapeutic tools to prevent preterm labour and to increase offspring survival. Environmental enrichment (EE) strategy has been found to be beneficial in animal models of several neurodegenerative diseases and reverses some consequences of prenatal stress. In general, EE appears to be associated with an overall improvement in the psychological and physical wellbeing of animals. So we assayed the possibility that the EE could prevent the consequences of inflammation induced by bacterial components on pregnancy and labour. In this sense mice were maintained either under a standard condition or upon an enriched environment. Surprisingly we observed that EE prevented preterm delivery in 35% of cases. We also tested two pharmacological treatments to prevent PD. Melatonin, the main product of the pineal gland, contributes to gestation maintenance by stimulating progesterone production and maintaining uterine quiescence. We observed that maternal administration of melatonin prevented LPS-induced PD in 50% of the cases and increased offspring survival. Resveratrol is a polyphenol abundantly found in grapes and red wine exhibiting beneficial health effects owing to its antioxidant and anti- inflammatory properties. We investigated the putative preventive effect of resveratrol on PD as well as the mechanism involved in such protection.