Early life adversity accelerates hypothalamic drive of pubertal timing in female rats with associated enhanced acoustic startle

Horm Behav. 2024 Jan 18;159:105478. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2024.105478. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTEarly life adversity in the form of childhood maltreatment in humans or as modeled by maternal separation (MS) in rodents is often associated with an earlier emergence of puberty in females. Earlier pubertal initiation is an example of accelerated biological aging and predicts later risk for anxiety in women, especially in populations exposed to early life trauma. Here we investigated external pubertal markers as well as hypothalamic gene expression of pubertal regulators kisspeptin and gonadotropin-releasing hormone, to determine a biological substrate for MS-induced accelerated puberty. We further investigated a mechanism by which developmental stress might regulate pubertal timing. As kisspeptin and gonadotropin-releasing hormone secretion are typically inhibited by corticotropin releasing hormone at its receptor CRH-R1, we hypothesized that MS induces a downregulation of Crhr1 gene transcription in a cell-specific manner. Finally, we explored the association between pubertal timing and anxiety-like behavior in an acoustic startle paradigm, to drive future preclinical research linking accelerated puberty and anxiety. We replicated previous findings that MS leads to earlier puberty in females but not males, and found expression of kisspeptin and gonadotropin-releasing hormone mRNA to be prematurely increased in MS females. RNAscope confirmed increased expression of these gene...
Source: Hormones and Behavior - Category: Endocrinology Authors: Source Type: research