Social stress before pregnancy can cause mood and memory disorders in male offspring

What is it about?

Many studies have reported that depression and stress during pregnancy can cause depression and anxiety in offspring. We aimed to extend on this research by determining whether social stress before pregnancy produces depression and anxiety in offspring and whether it causes physiological changes in offspring. We therefore exposed female rats to stressful interactions with other rats before impregnating the female rats and performing various tests on their male offspring once those offspring reached adolescence.

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Why is it important?

We found that the male offspring of stress-exposed female rats exhibited various behaviors suggestive of anxiety, such as an unwillingness to explore physical environments that seemed risky. They also appeared to have memory impairments, which manifested as difficulties in recognizing objects and in remembering locations. Furthermore, we found that the male offspring of stress-exposed female rats had unusually high levels of stress-related hormones in their blood. We also found that stress-related brain regions in the male offspring had altered levels of various anxiety-related neurotransmitters and of proteins that regulate brain activity. Our findings offer novel and important insights into how a history of stress can damage the mental health of an individual’s future offspring.

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