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The effects of early life adversity on growth, maturation, and steroid hormones in male and female rats.

ABSTRACT: Early life adversity is a risk factor for psychiatric disorders, yet the mechanisms by which adversity increases this risk are still being delineated. Here, we used a limited bedding and nesting (LBN) manipulation in rats that models a low resource environment to examine effects on growth, developmental milestones, and endocrine endpoints. In LBN, dams and pups, from pups' postnatal days 2-9, are exposed to an environment where dams lack proper materials to build a nest. This manipulation is compared to control housing conditions, where rat dams have access to ample nesting materials and enrichment throughout pups' development. We found that the LBN condition altered maternal care, increasing pup-directed behaviors while reducing self-care. This, perhaps compensatory, increase in nursing and attention to pups did not mitigate against changes in metabolism, as LBN reduced weight gain in both sexes and this effect persisted into adulthood. Although adult stress hormone levels in both sexes and vaginal opening and estrous cycle length in females were not disrupted, there was other evidence of endocrine dysregulation. Compared to controls, LBN rats of both sexes had shortened anogenital distances, indicating reduced androgen exposure. LBN males also had higher plasma estradiol levels in adulthood. This combination of results suggests that LBN causes a demasculinizing effect in males that could contribute to lasting changes in the brain and behavior. Importantly, alterations in metabolic and endocrine systems due to early life adversity could be one mechanism by which stress early in life increases risk for later disease.

SUBMITTER: Eck SR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8027906 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Enduring disruption of reward and stress circuit activities by early-life adversity in male rats.

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Effects of early life adversity on male reproductive behavior and the medial preoptic area

Project description:Early life adversity has been linked to altered reproductive development in humans, including changes in the timing of pubertal onset and sexual activity. One common form of early life adversity is having limited access to resources. This form of early life adversity can be modeled in rodents using the limited bedding and nesting model (LBN), in which rat dams and pups are placed in a low resource environment from postnatal day (PND) 2 through 9. Our laboratory has previously shown that male rats raised in LBN conditions have elevated levels of plasma estradiol compared to control males. Female rats, on the other hand, show no effect of LBN on plasma hormone levels, pubertal timing, or estrous cycle duration in adulthood. Here, we find that LBN males also show changes in adult reproductive behaviors. LBN males acquired the suite of reproductive behaviors more quickly than their control counterparts over the course of 3 weeks of testing, showing shorter latencies to mount, intromit, and ejaculate compared to controls prior to the final week of testing. We also characterized LBN-induced gene transcription changes across sex in the medial preoptic area (mPOA) which underlies reproductive behaviors. Interestingly, there was no effect of LBN on puberty onset (as measured by preputial separation) or masculinization of the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area (SDN/POA; as measured by calbindin immunoreactivity) in males, suggesting LBN may not exert effects on hormone-dependent measures until after puberty.

2022-02-15 | GSE174753 | GEO

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