Key Laboratory of Modern Teaching Technology, Ministry of Education, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710062, China.
Food Funct. 2021 May 21;12(10):4544-4555. doi: 10.1039/d0fo02926b. Epub 2021 Apr 27.
Maternal vitamin supplementation has been demonstrated to reduce the risks of a number of neurodevelopmental diseases in children. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a group of neurodevelopment defects with high prevalence but without satisfactory therapy. The present work detected the effects of pregnancy supplementation with folic acid (FA) at different doses on rat models of ASD induced by prenatal exposure to valproic acid (VPA), an anti-epileptic increasing the risk of ASD when administered during pregnancy. The results show that maternal FA supplementation at a high dose (4 mg kg) prevented the delay in growth and development, and the deficits in social communicative behaviors and repetitive behaviors, possibly by restoring the increased dendritic spine density and rectifying the over-expression of synaptic proteins associated with excitatory neurons and the lower expression with inhibitory ones. The results provided experimental evidence suggesting a possible role of maternal FA supplementation in preventing ASD.
母体维生素补充已被证明可降低儿童多种神经发育疾病的风险。自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）是一组神经发育缺陷，其发病率很高，但尚无令人满意的治疗方法。本工作检测了在产前暴露于丙戊酸（VPA）的 ASD 大鼠模型中，不同剂量的叶酸（FA）妊娠补充对其的影响，VPA 是一种抗癫痫药，在怀孕期间使用会增加 ASD 的风险。结果表明，母体 FA 高剂量（4mg/kg）补充可预防生长发育迟缓，以及社会交流行为和重复行为的缺陷，这可能是通过恢复增加的树突棘密度和纠正与兴奋性神经元相关的突触蛋白的过度表达以及抑制性神经元的表达水平来实现的。这些结果提供了实验证据，表明母体 FA 补充可能在预防 ASD 方面发挥作用。
