Early social stimulation and the stress response in an animal model of autism

CAMPOLONGO M; KAZLAUSKAS N; DEPINO A

Huerta Grande

Congreso; XXIX Congreso Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias; 2014

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

Autism is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by poor social interaction and communication, and by stereotyped or restricted behaviors. Symptoms appear in early childhood and persist in adulthood. Several clinical studies suggest that early social stimulation as the most effective treatment for autistic children, who show significant improvements in social behavior through these approaches. In addition, evidences suggest that patients with autism have alterations in stress and inflammatory responses. It was previously shown that the prenatal exposure to valproic acid (VPA) at gestational day 12.5 results in reduced social interaction in the adult offspring. In those experiments VPA-treated mice were weaned with other VPA mice. Here, we compared VPA mice weaned with VPA mice (VPA-VPA mice) and VPA-Saline groups (VPASal), containing 2-3 VPA-exposed mice per cage along with 2-3 Saline mice. This design allowed VPA and Sal mice to interact in the home cage from postnatal day (P)21 to P60. At P60, VPA-Sal mice showed higher levels of sociability than VPA-VPA mice, showing that this treatment can rescue at least some of the behavioral alterations observed in our model. We have previously identified alterations in inflammatory and stress responses after an inflammatory stimulus. Here, we further that analysis, studying the stress response to social novelty and whether this response in modulated by postnatal social stimulation.