Respostas biométricas, bioquímicas e comportamentais de camundongos adultos em resposta à privação de sono de suas mães após a fertilização

• Autor(a) principal: Calegare, Bruno Frederico Aguilar [UNIFESP]
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNIFESP
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.unifesp.br/handle/11600/10053
• topic: Privação de sono; Prenhez; Biometria; Comportamento; Estresse oxidativo; Homocisteína; Hormônios; Camundongos

Epidemiological and experimental evidences suggest that adolescents and adults prenatally exposed to adverse situations like poor nutrition, alcohol and stress show high prevalence of cognitive impairment, social behavior deficits as well as biochemical and physiological alterations, which may be in part related to epigenetic programming. This study was undertaken to determine whether prenatal exposure to sleep deprivation alters physiological, behavioral and oxidative metabolic processes of adult male offspring. One group of dams was continuously sleep deprived by platform technique from gestational Day 1 to 3 (PSD 72). Other 3 groups were sleep deprived by gentle handling for six hours on gestational Day 1 (GH 1), or 2 (GH 2) or 3 (GH 3). Finally, a number of dams were allowed to sleep during the pregnancy to obtain pregnancy time control. After sleep deprivation blood samples were collected from the mothers and their respective time controls to access homocysteine, cysteine, corticosterone, estrogen and progesterone concentrations. After born the male offspring were measured and weighted all over the experiment. In addition, behavior (activity box and elevated plus maze) was assessed on post natal day 90. Ninety one-day old male offspring were sacrificed and biochemical parameters were assayed. The dam’s concentration of plasma progesterone was decreased in PSD 72 and plasma estradiol increased in GH 2. Corticosterone levels were increased after all sleep deprivation procedures. Homocysteine concentrations increased in GH 2 and decreased in PSD 72. The offspring of sleep deprived mothers at the first day of pregnancy exhibited decreased superoxide dismutase activity, but unchanged catalase, homocysteine and cysteine levels and normal behavior on the elevated-plus maze and activity box. The exposure to sleep deprivation has a long-lasting impact on tissue weight as it causes a decrease in the abdominal fat weight in mature animal from PSD 72. Possibly inducing stress and hormonal alterations on mothers (the elevation of estrogen and corticosterone, and the decrease of progesterone) may contribute to permanent alteration in the epigenetic programming of adult offspring. Also, homocysteine changes in dams may be an important factor for the epigenetic alterations observed in offspring, contributing to redox changes that can control gene expression by shaping the epigenotype of developing organisms.