Respostas comportamentais e inflamatórias em ratos com sobrealimentação neonatal

Abstract

The perinatal environment is crucial for metabolic and hormonal programming and the quality of the environment in rodents have physiological and behavioral consequences in long-term. Adverse conditions in the perinatal period, a time when there is the development of the regulatory system of energy balance can reprogram metabolism and adjust it in this condition for life. One of the experimental models of neonatal programming is obtained by reducing litter, where litters are standardized for three or four pups per mother. The largest nutritional supply in early periods of development promotes a metabolic programming and the effects of this program can extend throughout life, with the postnatal overnutrition leading to obesity in adulthood. Since subcutaneous and abdominal adipose tissues are described as active tissues in the regulation of physiological and pathological processes including immunity and inflammation it becomes important to evaluate if the overfeeding and overweight arising from reduction in litter size lead to changes in the behavioral and inflammatory responses in adult offspring. In response to lipopolysaccharide, overweight adult male rats of this study exhibited an exacerbation of behavioral responses and increase of fever besides an increased plasma levels of corticosterone and IL-1β proinflammatory cytokine. In conclusion, our results show that overweight and its consequences interfere with the ability of these animals to respond to immune challenge. The experiments were developed in the Biomedical Sciences Laboratory of the Federal University of Alfenas.