ReviewBrain and neuroscience advances
Early-life stress and inflammation: A systematic review of a key experimental approach in rodents.
Review in Brain and neuroscience advances. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 56 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
56 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 90 citations in OpenAlex.
- "The wrong tools for the right job": a critical meta-analysis of traditional tests to assess behavioural impacts of maternal separation.Psychopharmacology · 2023Pooled it
- Temporal reorganization of maternal care during early life stress in mice.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Prenatal and early life phthalate exposure and early life stress: no interactions with adolescent internalizing symptoms.Environment international · 2026Article
- The Protective Effects of Chlorogenic Acid in Mitigating Gut-Brain Barrier Dysfunction and Autism-Like Symptoms Caused by Early-Life Stress in Mice: A Behavioral, Histopathological, and Molecular Study.Molecular neurobiology · 2026Article
- The microglial TREM2 receptor programs hippocampal development in a mouse model of childhood deprivation.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2026Article
- Systemic Biomarker Alterations in Alcohol and Psychoactive Substance Users: A Cross-Sectional Study.Biomolecules · 2026Article
- Long-Term Impact of Early-Life Stress on Hippocampal Apoptotic Gene Expression in BALB/c Mice.Neurochemical research · 2026Article
- Environmental enrichment as an intervention to prevent behavioral and neurobiological consequences of maternal separation in rodents: a scope review.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Early life stress exposure alters brain vasculature transcriptomic profiles in areas regulating stress resilience.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Mild pediatric traumatic brain injury has sex-specific effects on neuroimmune cells and social behavior in rats.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Impact of adverse postnatal environment on emotional regulation and neuroimmune function in adolescent rats prenatally exposed to alcohol.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Conflict resolution dynamics with stable caregivers confer resilience for youth exposed to early caregiving-related adversity.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Re-Examination of Inflammation in Major Depressive Disorder: Bridging Systemic and Neuroinflammatory Insights.Biomolecules · 2025Review
- Inflammatory status along the brain-liver axis in animals vulnerable to prenatal stress: sex-related implications for stress-induced comorbidities.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- Inflammatory and Immune Biomarkers in Mood Disorders: From Mechanistic Pathways to Clinical Translation.Cells · 2025Review
- Evidence of postnatal neglect-dependent resiliency in thymic, gut, and behavioral outcomes in a mouse model of early life stress.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2025Article
- Dependence of psychopharmacological drug effects on early social stress experience: An analysis aligned with the research domain criteria framework.The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics · 2025Review
- Inhibition of microglia priming by NLRP3 reduces the impact of early life stress and mild TBI.Journal of neuroinflammation · 2025Article
- Nutritional interventions to counteract the detrimental consequences of early-life stress.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Review
- Early-Life Adversity-Induced Epigenetic Reprogramming of Prefrontal Cortex in Rats Subjected to Maternal Separation.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Repeated maternal separation is the most widely used pre-clinical approach to investigate the relationship between early-life chronic stress and its neuropsychiatric and physical consequences. In this systematic review, we identified 46 studies that conducted repeated maternal separation or single-episode maternal separation and reported measurements of interleukin-1b, interleukin-6, interleukin-10, tumour necrosis factor-alpha, or microglia activation and density. We report that in the short-term and in the context of later-life stress, repeated maternal separation has pro-inflammatory immune consequences in diverse tissues. Repeated maternal separation animals exhibit greater microglial activation and elevated pro-inflammatory cytokine signalling in key brain regions implicated in human psychiatric disorders. Notably, repeated maternal separation generally has no long-term effect on cytokine expression in any tissue in the absence of later-life stress. These observations suggest that the elevated inflammatory signalling that has been reported in humans with a history of early-life stress may be the joint consequence of ongoing stressor exposure together with potentiated neural and/or immune responsiveness to stressors. Finally, our findings provide detailed guidance for future studies interrogating the causal roles of early-life stress and inflammation in disorders such as major depression.
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What OpenQuestion holds
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.