Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China; Wuhan Mental Health Center, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China.
Horm Behav. 2013 Sep;64(4):598-604. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2013.08.014. Epub 2013 Sep 1.
Bisphenol A (BPA) is a ubiquitous environmental endocrine disrupting compound (EDC); public health concerns have been fueled by findings that maternal BPA exposure can change sex differences in the brain and in some behaviors. We investigated whether a physiologically relevant dose of BPA ingested by male rats before conception would affect spatial memory and hippocampal acetylcholinesterase (AchE) in their adult offspring. Twenty-two 60-day-old male rats (F0) received either a BPA diet (50 μg/kg/day) or vehicle alone for 10 weeks before being mated with non-exposed females. The paternal rats and their forty adult offspring's (F1) behaviors were then examined in the Morris Water Maze (MWM) and their AchE activities in the hippocampus were evaluated. BPA exposure led to spatial memory deficits along with decreased AchE activities in the hippocampus (p = 0.01) in adult F0 rats. This paternal exposure also induced impairment in spatial memory acquisition in both sexes while retention only in females in F1 rats, as well as abolished sex differences in the hippocampus AchE. Overall, these data provide new evidence that paternal BPA exposure, at a "safe" dose, may induce transgenerational alterations in spatial memory in a sex-specific manner.
双酚 A（BPA）是一种普遍存在的环境内分泌干扰化合物（EDC）；公众健康的担忧源于这样的发现，即母体 BPA 暴露会改变大脑中的性别差异和某些行为。我们研究了雄性大鼠在受孕前摄入生理相关剂量的 BPA 是否会影响其成年后代的空间记忆和海马乙酰胆碱酯酶（AchE）。22 只 60 天大的雄性大鼠（F0）接受 BPA 饮食（50μg/kg/天）或单独载体 10 周，然后与未暴露的雌性大鼠交配。然后在 Morris 水迷宫（MWM）中检查父代大鼠及其 40 只成年后代（F1）的行为，并评估其海马中的 AchE 活性。BPA 暴露导致成年 F0 大鼠的空间记忆缺陷以及海马 AchE 活性降低（p=0.01）。这种父代暴露还导致 F1 大鼠的空间记忆获得受损，而雌性大鼠仅保留，以及海马 AchE 的性别差异消失。总的来说，这些数据提供了新的证据，表明在“安全”剂量下，父代 BPA 暴露可能会以性别特异性的方式引起空间记忆的跨代改变。
