Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience and Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Linköping University, S-581 85 Linköping, Sweden.
Division of Neurobiology, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Linköping University, S-581 85 Linköping, Sweden.
Brain Behav Immun. 2019 Mar;77:141-149. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2018.12.016. Epub 2018 Dec 24.
Maternal care is crucial for infants and profoundly affects their responses to different kinds of stressors. Here, we examined how maternal separation affects inflammatory gene expression and the corticosterone response to an acute immune challenge induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS; 40 µg/kg ip) in mouse pups, 8-9 days old. Maternal separation initially attenuated LPS-induced hypothalamic pro-inflammatory gene expression, but later, at 3 h after immune challenge, robustly augmented such gene expression and increased serum corticosterone levels. Providing the pups with a warm and soft object prevented the separation-induced augmented hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA)-axis response. It also prevented the potentiated induction of some, but not all, inflammatory genes to a similar extent as did the dam. Our results show that maternal separation potentiates the inflammatory response and the resulting HPA-axis activation, which may have detrimental effects if separation is prolonged or repeated.
母婴护理对婴儿至关重要，会深刻影响他们对不同压力源的反应。在这里，我们研究了母体分离如何影响炎性基因表达以及皮质酮对脂多糖（LPS；40µg/kg ip）诱导的急性免疫挑战的反应，实验对象为 8-9 天大的幼鼠。母体分离最初减弱了 LPS 诱导的下丘脑促炎基因表达，但随后在免疫挑战后 3 小时，强烈增强了这种基因表达，并增加了血清皮质酮水平。为幼鼠提供温暖柔软的物体可以防止分离引起的下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺（HPA）轴反应增强。它还可以防止一些但不是所有促炎基因的诱导增强，其程度与母体相似。我们的研究结果表明，母体分离会增强炎症反应和由此产生的 HPA 轴激活，如果分离延长或重复，可能会产生不利影响。
