Neurobiology, Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
Neurobiology, Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, Wacol, QLD 4076, Australia.
Nutrients. 2021 Nov 26;13(12):4254. doi: 10.3390/nu13124254.
Preeclampsia is a pregnancy disorder characterized by hypertension. Epidemiological studies have associated preeclampsia with an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders in offspring, such as autism and schizophrenia. Preeclampsia has also been linked with maternal vitamin D deficiency, another candidate risk factor also associated with autism. Our laboratory has established a gestational vitamin-D-deficient rat model that shows consistent and robust behavioural phenotypes associated with autism- and schizophrenia-related animal models. Therefore, we explored here whether this model also produces preeclampsia as a possible mediator of behavioural phenotypes in offspring. We showed that gestational vitamin D deficiency was not associated with maternal blood pressure or proteinuria during late gestation. Maternal and placental angiogenic and vasculogenic factors were also not affected by a vitamin-D-deficient diet. We further showed that exposure to low vitamin D levels did not expose the placenta to oxidative stress. Overall, gestational vitamin D deficiency in our rat model was not associated with preeclampsia-related features, suggesting that well-described behavioural phenotypes in offspring born to vitamin-D-deficient rat dams are unlikely to be mediated via a preeclampsia-related mechanism.
子痫前期是一种妊娠疾病，其特征是高血压。流行病学研究表明，子痫前期与后代神经发育障碍（如自闭症和精神分裂症）的风险增加有关。子痫前期还与母体维生素 D 缺乏有关，后者也是与自闭症相关的另一个候选风险因素。我们的实验室建立了一种妊娠期维生素 D 缺乏的大鼠模型，该模型显示出与自闭症和精神分裂症相关动物模型一致且强烈的行为表型。因此，我们在这里探讨了这种模型是否也会产生子痫前期，作为后代行为表型的可能介导因素。我们表明，妊娠期维生素 D 缺乏与孕晚期的母体血压或蛋白尿无关。母体和胎盘的血管生成和血管生成因子也不受维生素 D 缺乏饮食的影响。我们进一步表明，暴露于低维生素 D 水平并不会使胎盘暴露于氧化应激下。总的来说，我们大鼠模型中的妊娠期维生素 D 缺乏与子痫前期相关特征无关，这表明出生于维生素 D 缺乏大鼠的后代出现的典型行为表型不太可能通过与子痫前期相关的机制来介导。
