MALE HYPOTHALMIC-PITUITARY-TESTICULAR AXIS AND THE STRESS RESPONSE IN PRENATALLY STRESSED OFFSPRING

PALLARÉS ME; ADROVER E; MONTELEONE M; IMSEN M; DE LAURENTIIS A; TORNADU I; BECU D; BROCCO M; ANTONELLI MC

New Orleáns

Congreso; Reunión Anual de la Society for Neuroscience; 2012

Society for Neuroscience (SFN)

We have previously demonstrated that prenatal stress (PS) exerts an impairment of mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic metabolism (DA) especially after puberty indicating a particular sensitivity of DA system to variations in gonadal hormones peaks. We further demonstrated that the hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular axis status of male rats exposed to PS was altered since age-dependent changes on the pituitary and testicular hormones profiles and accelerated spermatogenesis rate were found. In the present work we further explore the effects of PS on the hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular axis. We employed a commonly use paradigm of prenatal stress in rats which consisted on restraining the dams three times per day from the 14th day of pregnancy until birth. Evaluation of D2 dopamine, androgen and estrogen receptors alpha and beta levels on prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and ventral tegmental area were performed on prepubertal and adult rats (28 and 75 days old rats) by using Western blot technique. In addition, quantification of mRNA levels of androgen and estrogen receptors levels were measured by RT- qPCR. Finally in order to study the stress response of the offspring, we measured prolactin and corticosterone levels in serum of PS prepubertal and adult rats that were exposed to an acute restraint stress session and after a recovery period of 2 hours.