Cellular neuroscienceEffects of repeated maternal stress on FOS expression in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus of fetal rats
Section snippets
Animals
Sprague–Dawley rats (Clea Japan, Tokyo, Japan) were housed at 22°C with free access to food and water, with a 12-h light/dark cycle (lights on at 8 a.m., off at 8 p.m.). Virgin female rats (8–10 weeks old) were kept with adult male rats in the same cage overnight for mating, and vaginal smears were examined the following morning. Embryonic day 0 was established as the day on which the smear was sperm-positive. Then each pregnant rat was housed separately in a plastic home cage (40×25×20cm) with
Effects of maternal stress on fetal body weights
The effects of maternal stress on fetal body weights (Table 1) revealed significant differences in the effect of sex [F(1,382)=29.04, P<0.01], stress treatment [F(1,382)=13.19, P<0.01], and stress period [F(2,382)=10.64, P<0.01]. Because there was no significant interaction between sex, stress treatment and stress period, the data from the male and female experiments were analyzed separately for each stress group. In male fetuses, the weights of the chronic immobilization (CI) group were
Discussion
The present experiments examined the effects of repeated prenatal stress with different severity (restraint and immobilization) on Fos expression in the maternal and fetal PVN. The changes in Fos expression caused by repeated stress and by acute stress were compared. Acute stress treatment was performed for 30 min on gestational day 21, and chronic stress treatment for 30 min daily for 5 days from gestational days 17–21. The following is a summary of this study: 1) In the parvocellular region
Conclusions
The fetal PVN shows no adaptation of Fos expression to repeated maternal stress, but great vulnerability to cell death, including apoptosis. Moreover, females may have greater vulnerability to stress-induced apoptosis than males.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Dr. M. Iwamoto for advice on statistical analysis, Ms J. Ueda and K. Tanaka for technical assistance and Dr. R. C. Lee for improving the English.
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