ArticlePhysiology & behavior2020
Early life stress reduces voluntary exercise and its prevention of diet-induced obesity and metabolic dysfunction in mice.
Article in Physiology & behavior, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- Impact of Early Postnatal Maternal Separation Stress on Pancreatic Function in Rodents: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Pooled it
- Born to run? Associations between gestational and early-life exposures and later-life performance outcomes in Thoroughbreds.Equine veterinary journal · 2026Article
- Inflammatory status along the brain-liver axis in animals vulnerable to prenatal stress: sex-related implications for stress-induced comorbidities.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- When Timing Matters: Effects of Maternal Separation and Post-Weaning High-Fat Diet on Liver Morphology in a Rodent Model.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Methods for Modeling Early Life Stress in Rodents.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2025Review
- Article
- Increased plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) and its associations with metabolic risk in healthy young adults with early life stress.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2024Article
- Exposure to early-life stress impairs weight-loss maintenance success in mice.Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.) · 2024Article
- Early-life stress perturbs the epigenetics of Cd36 concurrent with adult onset of NAFLD in mice.Pediatric research · 2023Article
- High-fat/high-sucrose diet worsens metabolic outcomes and widespread hypersensitivity following early-life stress exposure in female mice.American journal of physiology. Regulatory, integrative and comparative physiology · 2023Article
- Early Life Stress AffectsInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Neurobiological Mechanisms Modulating Emotionality, Cognition and Reward-Related Behaviour in High-Fat Diet-Fed Rodents.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Review
- Reduced Hippocampal Volume and Neurochemical Response to Adult Stress Exposure in a Female Mouse Model of Urogenital Hypersensitivity.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Childhood psychosocial stress is linked with impaired vascular endothelial function, lower SIRT1, and oxidative stress in young adulthood.American journal of physiology. Heart and circulatory physiology · 2021Article
- An Omega-3-rich Anti-inflammatory Diet Improved Widespread Allodynia and Worsened Metabolic Outcomes in Adult Mice Exposed to Neonatal Maternal Separation.Neuroscience · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The development of obesity-related metabolic syndrome (MetS) involves a complex interaction of genetic and environmental factors. One environmental factor found to be significantly associated with MetS is early life stress (ELS). We have previously reported on our mouse model of ELS, induced by neonatal maternal separation (NMS), that displays altered regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and increased sensitivity in the urogenital organs, which was attenuated by voluntary wheel running. Here, we are using our NMS model to determine if ELS-induced changes in the HPA axis also influence weight gain and MetS. Naïve (non-stressed) and NMS male mice were given free access to a running wheel and a low-fat control diet at 4-weeks of age. At 16-weeks of age, half of the mice were transitioned to a high fat/sucrose (HFS) diet to investigate if NMS influences the effectiveness of voluntary exercise to prevent diet-induced obesity and MetS. Overall, we observed a greater impact of voluntary exercise on prevention of HFS diet-induced outcomes in naïve mice, compared to NMS mice. Although body weight and fat mass were still significantly higher, exercise attenuated fasting insulin levels and mRNA levels of inflammatory markers in epididymal adipose tissue in HFS diet-fed naïve mice. Only moderate changes were observed in exercised NMS mice on a HFS diet, although this could partially be explained by reduced running distance within this group. Interestingly, sedentary NMS mice on a control diet displayed impaired glucose homeostasis and moderately increased pro-inflammatory mRNA levels in epididymal adipose, suggesting that early life stress alone impairs metabolic function and negatively impacts the therapeutic effect of voluntary exercise.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.