QUANTIFYING PLASMA CORTICOSTERONE LEVELS FOLLOWING A CAREGIVING PARADIGM OF EARLY-LIFE ADVERSITY
Date
2019-05
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Stress is a common stimulus for both animals and humans. To process stressful
stimuli, the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is crucial in the physiological
cascade that produces glucocorticoid stress hormones: cortisol in humans and
corticosterone in rodents. Glucocorticoids are essential for proper development,
circadian rhythm, and behavior; however, overexpression of these hormones can result
in damaging physiological and behavioral changes, often through the modification of
transcription and the epigenome. Previous work in our lab has determined behavioral
and epigenetic consequences in rodents exposed to our well-established seven-day
caregiving behavioral paradigm of early-life adversity. External research has indicated
a stress hyporesponsive period in infant rodents, where even in the presence of
aversive and stressful stimuli, a pup’s HPA axis will not be activated. Here we test
whether our aversive caregiving conditions evoke corticosterone production, as
corticosterone could be involved in our previously discovered behavioral and
epigenetic consequences of the caregiving paradigm. Results indicated no significant
change in corticosterone levels based on treatment group or sex. These data are
consistent with other work showing the lack of a corticosterone response to stressful
and aversive stimuli during the stress hyporesponsive period, and suggests that our
behavioral paradigm induces epigenetic, behavioral, and neurological changes without
the influence of increased corticosterone.
Description
Keywords
Biological sciences,Plasma corticosterone, Early-life adversity