Perinatal protein malnutrition induced anhedonia is associated to a reduced hippocampal dendritic spine density and BDNF levels in the adult offspring.

MARÍA CECILIA GUTIÉRREZ; , RÍA CECILIA PERONDI; RAMIRO COMAS M UTIS; GABRIEL CUADRA; CALFA, GASTÓN DIEGO; ANALÍA VALDOMERO

Congreso; XXXIV Annual Meeting of the Argentine Society for Research in Neuroscience; 2019

Growing eviden
ce indicates that depression is closely related to neuronal
morphological alterations in specific brain areas. In addition, brain derived
neurotrophic factor (BDNF) plays a key r ole in the structural plasticity induced by
such disorder. In order to investi gate neurobiological substrates linked with early
protein undernutrition facilitated depressive like behaviours, we studied the impact
of nutritional insult on the dendritic spin e de nsity at CA1 hippocampal neurons and
BDNF levels in this brain area. Thus, adult animals submitted to a perinatal protein
deprivation schedule (D rats) and well nourished animals (C rats) were exposed to
the sucrose preference test, a paradigm usually empl oyed to evaluate anhedonia.
After the test, different groups of C and D r ats were perfused for dendritic spine
analysis or sacrificed for BDNF levels quantification. According to previous results,
D rats showed a significant reduction of sucrose prefe renc e compared to C rats.
Furthermore, D animals elicited a lower density of t otal dendritic spines,
particularly mature ones, which was correlated with decreased levels of BDNF in
the hippocampus. These results suggest that morphological and molecular
alt erat ions in the hippocampus of malnourished animals may contribute to a lower
ability to cope with appetitive stimuli.