ENRICHED ENVIRONMENT STRATEGY IMPROVES THE PREGNANCY OUTCOME AND THE OFFSPRING?S ADULT HEALTH FOLLOWING AN IMMUNE CHALLENGE DURING GESTATION.

SCHANDER, JULIETA AYLEN; AISEMBERG, JULIETA; MARVALDI, CAROLINA; JENSEN, FEDERICO; FRANCHI, ANA MARIA

Mar del Plata

Congreso; Reunion conjunta SAIC SAI SAFIS 2018; 2018

SAIC

The enrichment of theenvironment has been associated to a general wellbeing of animals and we havepreviously demonstrated that the exposition to an enriched environment (EE)reduces (41%) the preterm delivery rate induced by the administration of bacteriallipopolysaccharide (LPS) in a mouse model. The objective of the present studywas to evaluate the effects of LPS and EE treatment in the offspring. Our EEprotocol consisted in housing a group of ten six week old BALB/c females inlarger cages containing a variety of objects, such as stairs, tunnels andwheels that provided optimal conditions for social interaction, furtherexploration, visual, cognitive, and voluntary exercise activity. Standardconditions (control environment, CE) consisted of standard laboratory cages, thathoused 4 animals. After 6 weeks females were mated with males in regular cagesand pregnant females returned to EE (or CE) cages till day 15th of pregnancy,when LPS (or saline solution) was administered. Eight hours after LPS administration,females were killed to evaluate fetal and placental weight. We found thatplacental weight was significantly diminished in EE mothers, whereasfetal/placental ratio was not different between groups. Another group wasallowed to continue the gestation to term, when litter size, perinatal death,weight gain during lactation and some physical landmarks of rodent development wereevaluated. We did not found differences in the weight gain, but CE-LPS grouppresented 66,7% of perinatal death, which was not observed in EE-LPS-treatedgroup. Also a group of pups from CE-LPS-treated mothers presented a delay in physicallandmarks. Furthermore, preliminary results showed that LPS increasestriglyceride and cholesterol levels in the offspring adulthood and it seems tobe prevented by the maternal exposition to EE. Collectively, our results shownthat EE prevents some of the deleterious effects of LPS exposition duringgestation