Prenatal stress and long-term consequences: implications of glucocorticoid hormones
Section snippets
Perinatal events in humans
There is increasing evidence that variations in prenatal environment can influence the responses of the new-born. Barker [1] has emphasized how adult vulnerability to cardiovascular disease may be programmed during the fetal period. Indeed, non-genetic factors that could act early in life to organize or imprint permanently physiological systems are known as perinatal programming [2], [3]. It can be speculated that prenatal plasticity of physiological systems allows environmental factors, acting
An animal model characterization
In order to better understand mechanisms involved in the long-term effects of such early experiences and considering the obvious difficulties inherent to human research in this particular field, different kind of prenatal stress animal models have been developed. Pregnant rats have been subjected to various types of stressors: conditioned avoidance training [15], tail suspension [16], crowding [17], repeated electric shocks [18], noise [19] or saline injections [20]. During the last years we
Parallel between prenatal stress effects and biological abnormalities found in depression
Taken together, our results indicate that prenatal stress induces an increased stress response and abnormal circadian and sleep function in adult rats, suggesting an underlying dysfunction of their circadian clock and a global bad adaptation to challenges. These biological alterations indicate that PNRS adult rats have similar biological correlates of depressed patients [63], [64]. Thus, like depressed patients, PNRS rats do escape from the feedback inhibition responsible for returning
Predictive validity
The PNRS seems to be an interesting animal model because of the permanent disturbances it produces in the long-term. We determined whether PNRS rats are sensitive to a chronic treatment with antidepressants. There is one single report showing efficacy of tricyclic antidepressants in prenatally stressed female rats [80].
We investigated the behavioral response of PNRS rats in the forced swimming test (Porsolt test), a behavioral test classically used to study antidepressant efficacy. The
Role of maternal factors
In order to understand the pathophysiological mechanisms by which stress in the mother reaches the fetus and influences its development, we studied the effects of blocking maternal corticosterone secretion during PNRS on stress-induced corticosterone secretion and hippocampal corticosteroid receptors in adult offspring [82]. Dams were adrenalectomized, at 13 days of pregnancy to block the increased in corticosterone secretion induced by restraint stress. Adrenalectomized dams were implanted
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Fondation de la Recherche Medicale, the University of Lille 1, the Belgian FNRS and FRSM, SERVIER.
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