Professora no NEFCS publica importante artigo sobre plasticidade neuronal na revista "Neuroscience"

Nutrient restriction during early life reduces cell proliferation in the hippocampus at adulthood but does impairs the neuronal differentiation process of the new generated cells

Neuroscience

Rhowena J.B. Matos1, Ricardo Orozco-Solís1, Sandra Lopes de Souza2, Raul Manhães de Castro3, Francisco Bolaños-Jiménez

1 INRA, UMR1280 Physiologie des Adaptations Nutritionnelles, Université de Nantes, Nantes Atlantique Université, Nantes, France
2 Departamento de Anatomia, Centro de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil
3 Departamento de Nutriçao, Centro de Ciências da Saude, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil



Maternal malnutrition results in learning deficits and predisposition to anxiety and depression in the offspring that extend into adulthood. At the cellular level, learning and memory relay on the production of new neurones in the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus and hippocampal neurogenesis has been associated with the aetiology and treatment of depression but whether adult neurogenesis is affected by malnutrition during early life is not known. To investigate the effects of perinatal undernutrition on neurogenesis at adulthood, pregnant Sprague-Dawley rats were fed either ad libitum (C) or were undernourished by reducing their daily food intake by 50% in relation to the C group during gestation and lactation (FR/FR). At birth, one subset of control pups was cross-fostered to food-restricted dams to constitute a third group of animals that were undernourished during the lactation period only (AdLib/FR). At 90 days of age, pups were injected with bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) and sacrificed 2 h, 1 week or 3 weeks later. The number of BrdU-labelled cells in the DG was significantly reduced in the offspring of FR/FR dams in relation to controls at all the time points examined. However, the proportion of new cells exhibiting a neuronal phenotype was higher in FR/FR rats than in controls as revealed by the co-labelling at 3 weeks of the BrdU-labelled cells with NeuN. AdLib/FR animals exhibited also reduced BrdU labelling at 2h and 1 week. Nevertheless, we found no significant differences at 3 weeks in either the number of BrdU-labelled cells or in the proportion of new neurones between controls and AdLib/FR rats. These results indicate that the decreased number of hippocampal neurons in perinatally undernourished rats is due to the deleterious effects of early nutrient restriction on cell proliferation but not on the neuronal differentiation process of the new generated cells.
Highlights

▶Malnutrition during early life results in cognitive deficits at adulthood. ▶Learning and memory relay on the production of new neurons in the hippocampus. ▶Whether adult neurogenesis is affected by perinatal undernutrition is not known. ▶The number of new hippocampal cells is reduced in adult rats born to malnourished dams. ▶Neuronal differentiation of adult-generated cells is not altered by early malnutrition.

Keywords: Adult neurogenesis; Perinatal malnutrition; Nutritional programming; Brain; Rat