Effects of undernutrition and obesity on neurodevelopment and metabolism

BARRIOS, CLAUDIO DARÍO; DEPINO, AMAICHA MARA; ELIA, EVELIN

San Luis

Congreso; SAN2023 Annual Meeting; 2023

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

Malnutrition includes undernutrition and overweight/obesity, and various animal models have been established to explore their effects on health. A recent malnutrition type, double burden of malnutrition (DBM) emerges in vulnerable groups, where undernutrition and overweight coexist creating unknown public health issues. No animal model yet replicates DBM complexities, metabolic outcomes, and neurodevelopmental impacts. Our goal is to establish an animal model of DBM, to study its implications on health. For this, we developed two models:one of undernutrition (long maternal separation, LMS) and one of obesity (cafeteria diet, CAF). In LMS, we separated half the litter 8hrs/day between postnatal days (PD) 5-21.This protocol resulted in reduced weight in male and female mice. In addition, LMS males exhibited reduced social behavior, while LMS females showed heightened depressive-like behavior. For CAF, animals were maintained on a 14-week cafeteria diet starting at PD21. CAF animals showed increased body weight, glucose and cholesterol levels, all associated with metabolic syndrome. CAF animals exhibited a decrease in locomotion across various behavioral tests, but increased swimming time in the forced swim test. Combining LMS and CAF models for DBM, we’ll explore distinct behavior and metabolic effects.This integrated approach aims to unveil health challenges and mechanisms in this malnutrition type, shedding light on nutrition, neurodevelopment, and metabolism interterplay