CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Social vulnerability refers to conditions of social, economic and cultural disadvantages experienced by some population groups as a result of a prevailing social order. These conditions increase the risk of setting up disorders such as anxiety, depression, aggressiveness and lack of inhibitory control, among others. This work aims to design and validate a murine model of social vulnerability (VS) to, later on, study molecular mechanisms that mediate the development of behavioral disorders in dams and offspring produced by a set of adverse environmental factors. The model tries to simulate unfavorable conditions to which mothers and children of the most disadvantaged social sectors are frequently exposed:-limited protection of the mother during pregnancy and nursing: cages are frequently intervened during pregnancy and dams are physically restrained during the nursing period-inadequate habitability conditions: cages contain little bedding and without nesting material-early mother-child separation for long periods: daily separation between PD6 and PD16, as well as early weaning: -harassment-violence: pups are exposed to a dominant male mouse between PD20-PD30.Dams and offspring were evaluated in different behavioral tests. Dams exposed to VS offered less care to their pups (quantity and quality of activities such as nursing, grooming and liking between PD1-PD5), displayed depression-like traits (forced swimming test) and held more risk behaviors (elevated plus maze test) than dams in the control group. Regarding offspring, VS treated mice presented dominant behavior over mice of control group (dominance tube test), deficiency in spatial recognition memory (novel object place recognition test) and aggressiveness signs (intruder?resident test). All indicated differences were statistically significant.Results obtained from dams and offspring sustain the face validity for the proposed model of social vulnerability, which allows us to approach its target validity.