Lerch Sandra, Brandwein Christiane, Dormann Christof, Gass Peter, Chourbaji Sabine
Interfaculty Biomedical Research Facility (IBF), University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany; Central Institute of Mental Health (ZI) Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
Central Institute of Mental Health (ZI) Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
Behav Brain Res. 2015 Feb 15;279:155-65. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2014.11.007. Epub 2014 Nov 13.
Working with mice represents a smart method to study pathophysiological mechanisms in vivo. However, using animals as model organisms also bears immense caveats. While many aspects in animal research are meanwhile standardized (e.g. nutrition, housing, health) the breeding environment remains unaddressed. Moreover, since the "production" of mice is mostly performed pragmatically, continuous mating (CM) represents a common method to boost the amount of offspring. This condition implies simultaneous pregnancy and lactation in presence of the male, which is associated with increased costs for the breeding dam. Facing the widely-accepted impact of perinatal conditions, our aim was to elucidate how CM affects emotional behaviour of mouse offspring. We therefore compared pregnant mice in CM with mice raising their pups without potentially disturbing influences. According to our hypothesis CM-deriving offspring should demonstrate increased anxiety and depression-like behaviour shaped by pre- and postnatal stress of the mother. Maternal care, i.e. nest building and pup retrieval, was analysed around delivery. To assess the emotional state of the offspring, males and females of either condition were exposed to a behavioural test battery for exploration, anxiety and fear, social and despair behaviour. In addition we analysed corticosterone as stressphysiological correlate. Our study demonstrates that CM affects the emotional phenotype regarding nearly all parameters addressed. These findings emphasize (i) the impact of the perinatal environment on stress-associated behaviour such as depression, and (ii) the need to imply perinatal conditions in the experimental design to decrease the risk of artefacts and increase the overall validity of animal studies.
使用小鼠进行研究是一种在体内研究病理生理机制的明智方法。然而，将动物用作模式生物也存在诸多重大问题。尽管动物研究中的许多方面目前已实现标准化（如营养、饲养、健康状况），但繁殖环境仍未得到关注。此外，由于小鼠的“繁殖”大多是基于实际需求进行的，连续交配（CM）是增加后代数量的常用方法。这种情况意味着在雄性存在的情况下同时怀孕和哺乳，这会增加繁殖母鼠的成本。鉴于围产期条件的广泛公认的影响，我们的目标是阐明连续交配如何影响小鼠后代的情绪行为。因此，我们将处于连续交配状态的怀孕小鼠与在没有潜在干扰影响的情况下养育幼崽的小鼠进行了比较。根据我们的假设，来自连续交配的后代应该表现出因母亲产前和产后压力而形成的焦虑和抑郁样行为增加。在分娩前后分析了母性行为，即筑巢和找回幼崽的行为。为了评估后代的情绪状态，对两种情况下的雄性和雌性小鼠都进行了一系列行为测试，以检测探索、焦虑和恐惧、社交及绝望行为。此外，我们分析了皮质酮作为应激生理相关指标。我们的研究表明，连续交配几乎影响了所有所涉及参数的情绪表型。这些发现强调了（i）围产期环境对诸如抑郁等与压力相关行为的影响，以及（ii）在实验设计中考虑围产期条件以降低人为因素风险并提高动物研究整体有效性的必要性。
