IFIBYNE   05513
INSTITUTO DE FISIOLOGIA, BIOLOGIA MOLECULAR Y NEUROCIENCIAS
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Peripheral and central exacerbated inflammatory responses in a mouse model of autism spectrum disorders
Autor/es:
LUCCHINA L; DEPINO A
Lugar:
Huerta Grande
Reunión:
Congreso; XXVII Congreso Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias; 2012
Institución organizadora:
Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias
Resumen:
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are severe neurodevelopmental disorders with a prevalence estimated in 9 per 1000 population. The symptoms of autism involve significant impairments in social, communicative, and cognitive functioning. Based in several studies, which associated brain inflammation with ASD, we hypothesized that the glial response represents an underlying common factor in the different proposed etiologies of ASD. To investigate this, we used a mouse model of autism: the prenatal exposure to VPA. Our results show that mice exposed prenatally to VPA have reduced social interaction and increased anxiety-related behavior in adulthood. Prenatal exposure to VPA also led to an exacerbated response to an inflammatory stimulus in adulthood, observed as an increment in the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and as a bigger activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. This exacerbated response was also found in the brain: VPA-exposed animals showed glial activation in different brain zones and an exacerbated inflammatory central response to a peripheral LPS challenge. These results demonstrate a basal and subclinical inflammatory state in the brains of VPA-exposed animals and an increased reactivity to adult inflammatory stimuli. We therefore propose that the neuroinflammation observed in human postmortem studies represent an actual ASD phenotype. We will next evaluate to what extent this inflammatory reactivity contributes to the behavioral phenotype.