Early-Life Stress Reprograms Stress-Coping Abilities in Male and Female Juvenile Rats.

Prenatal stress (PS) is a major risk factor for the development of emotional disorders in adulthood that may be mediated by an altered hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis response to stress. Although the early onset of stress-related disorders is recognized as a major public health problem, to date, there are relatively few studies that have examined the incidence of early-life stressors in younger individuals. In this study, we assessed PS impact on the stress-coping response of juvenile offspring in behavioral tests and in the induced molecular changes in the hippocampus.

Expression profile of genes as indicators of developmental competence and quality of in vitro fertilization and somatic cell nuclear transfer bovine embryos.

Reproductive biotechnologies such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) enable improved reproductive efficiency of animals. However, the birth rate of in vitro-derived embryos still lags behind that of their in vivo counterparts. Thus, it is critical to develop an accurate evaluation and prediction system of embryo competence, both for commercial purposes and for scientific research.

Age-dependent effects of prenatal stress on the corticolimbic dopaminergic system development in the rat male offspring.

We have previously demonstrated that prenatal stress (PS) exerts an impairment of midbrain dopaminergic (DA) system metabolism especially after puberty, suggesting a particular sensitivity of DA development to variations in gonadal hormonal peaks. Furthermore we demonstrated that PS alters the long term androgens profile of the rat male offspring from prepubertal to adult stages. In this work we evaluated the sexual hormones activational effects on the DA system by analysing PS effects on the dopaminergic D2-like (D2R) and on the gonadal hormones receptor levels on cortical and hippocampal areas of prepubertal and adult male offspring.