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Abstract:
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The Fetal Basis of Adult Disease (FeBAD) is a phenomenon in which prenatal insults lead to a silent damage or vulnerability that does not emerge as a functional deficit until later in life. Although numerous outcome studies have documented this phenomenon, little is known about functional changes that take place across development after such an insult. In prior work we have shown that prenatal behavioral deficits predict cognitive dysfunction in adulthood. In this cross-sectional study, a series of behavioral observations were made of prenatal (E18, E19, E20, & E21) and postnatal (P1, P5, P10, P30, & P45) rats. Subjects were the offspring of pregnant rats that had been exposed to a low dose (10 mg/kg) of the neurotoxin methylazoxymethanol (MAM, Midwest Research Institute), by intraperitoneal injection on E17. Behavioral observations included limb synchrony, nipple attachment, facial wipes, and open field scoring. For nearly all behavioral measures, the existence of differences was dependent upon the day of testing and the behavioral measure itself, suggesting recovery or compensation may have occurred between testing days. These transient behavioral deficits support findings from previous perinatal studies on the possible pattern of behavioral development likely to be observed during the emergence of FeBAD. Because deficits were observed in a transient pattern, traditional outcome measures may not detect deficits reliably. Consequently, these results suggest that the best methods for investigating the connection between neural insults and FeBAD are age-appropriate behavioral measures collected at numerous time points across development. |
