Increased PKC activity in frontal cerebral cortex of stressed neonatal rats.

MJ SCOLARI Y GB ACOSTA

Córdoba

Congreso; XXXVIII Reunión Científica Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Farmacología Experimental (SAFE).; 2006

SAFE

In the last years, we demonstrated that the postnatal acute stress modified the neuronal responses through changes in aminoacidergic transporters activity, this fact, appears to be associated with neurobiological alterations. The aim of this study was to investigate if the alterations induced by postnatal stress in rat developing brain is correlated with changes in PKC activity which is proposed as a molecular transporter regulator. Experiments were performed with cerebral frontal cortex (CF) of rats in different postnatal days up to adulthood. Neonates were stressed by cold exposure during 1 hour at 4ºC. Unhandled neonates, left undisturbed in their home cages, served as control. Upon termination of cold exposure, neonates were killed by decapitation. The brain was removed and CF was dissected. PKC activity was assayed on both cytosolic and membrane preparations by measuring the incorporation of 32P to a peptidic substrate (histone). We found significant increase in the stressed animals compared with control groups at 5 (p