ArticleFrontiers in behavioral neuroscience2020
Targeting the Stress System During Gestation: Is Early Handling a Protective Strategy for the Offspring?
Article in Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Structural remodeling of medium spiny neurons in the tail of the striatum and stress-related behavioral alterations after early handling and adolescent stress in male rats.IBRO neuroscience reports · 2026Article
- Nucleus accumbens functional connectivity changes underlying alcohol expectancies in bipolar disorder and prospective alcohol outcomes: a within-subject randomized placebo-controlled alcohol administration fMRI study.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Prenatal Exposure to Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol Affects Hippocampus-Related Cognitive Functions in the Adolescent Rat Offspring: Focus on Specific Markers of Neuroplasticity.Pharmaceutics · 2023Article
- The Effect of Early Neurological Stimulation on Puppy Welfare in Commercial Breeding Kennels.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- DNA methylation in blood cells is associated with cortisol levels in offspring of mothers who had prenatal post-traumatic stress disorder.Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The perinatal window is a critical developmental time when abnormal gestational stimuli may alter the development of the stress system that, in turn, influences behavioral and physiological responses in the newborns. Individual differences in stress reactivity are also determined by variations in maternal care, resulting from environmental manipulations. Despite glucocorticoids are the primary programming factor for the offspring's stress response, therapeutic corticosteroids are commonly used during late gestation to prevent preterm negative outcomes, exposing the offspring to potentially aberrant stress reactivity later in life. Thus, in this study, we investigated the consequences of one daily s.c. injection of corticosterone (25 mg/kg), from gestational day (GD) 14-16, and its interaction with offspring early handling, consisting in a brief 15-min maternal separation until weaning, on: (i) maternal behavior; and (ii) behavioral reactivity, emotional state and depressive-like behavior in the adolescent offspring. Corticosterone plasma levels, under non-shock- and shock-induced conditions, were also assessed. Our results show that gestational exposure to corticosterone was associated with diminished maternal care, impaired behavioral reactivity, increased emotional state and depressive-like behavior in the offspring, associated with an aberrant corticosterone response. The early handling procedure, which resulted in increased maternal care, was able to counteract the detrimental effects induced by gestational corticosterone exposure both in the behavioral- and neurochemical parameters examined. These findings highlight the potentially detrimental consequences of targeting the stress system during pregnancy as a vulnerability factor for the occurrence of emotional and affective distress in the adolescent offspring. Maternal extra-care proves to be a protective strategy that confers resiliency and restores homeostasis.
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