Early life stress increases vulnerability to the sequelae of pediatric mild traumatic brain injury.

Early life stress increases vulnerability to the sequelae of pediatric mild traumatic brain injury. Exp Neurol. 2020 Apr 16;:113318 Authors: Diaz-Chávez A, Lajud N, Roque A, Cheng JP, Meléndez-Herrera E, Valdéz-Alarcón JJ, Bondi CO, Kline AE Abstract Early life stress (ELS) is a risk factor for many psychopathologies that happen later in life. Although stress can occur in cases of child abuse, studies on non-accidental brain injuries in pediatric populations do not consider the possible increase in vulnerability caused by ELS. Hence, we sought to determine whether ELS increases the effects of pediatric mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) on cognition, hippocampal inflammation, and plasticity. Male rats were subjected to maternal separation for 180 min per day (MS180) or used as controls (CONT) during the first 21 post-natal (P) days. At P21 the rats were anesthetized with isoflurane and subjected to a mild controlled cortical impact or sham injury. At P32 the rats were injected with the cell proliferation marker bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU, 500 mg/kg), then evaluated for spatial learning and memory in a water maze (P35-40) and sacrificed for quantification of Ki67+, BrdU+ and Iba1+ (P42). Neither MS180 nor mTBI impacted cognitive outcome when provided alone but their combination (MS180 + mTBI) decreased spatial learning and memory relative to Sham controls (p < .01). mTBI increased microglial activation and affected Brd...
Source: Experimental Neurology - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Exp Neurol Source Type: research