Maternal Antibiotic Administration During a Critical Developmental Window Has Enduring Neurobehavioural Effects in Offspring Mice.

Maternal Antibiotic Administration During a Critical Developmental Window Has Enduring Neurobehavioural Effects in Offspring Mice. Behav Brain Res. 2021 Feb 08;:113156 Authors: O'Connor R, Moloney GM, Fulling C, O'Riordan K, Fitzgerald P, Thomaz B, Schellekens H, Dinan TG, Cryan JF Abstract Rates of perinatal maternal antibiotic use have increased in recent years linked to prophylactic antibiotic use following Caesarean section delivery. This antibiotic use is necessary and beneficial in the short-term; however, long-term consequences on brain and behaviour have not been studied in detail. Here, we endeavoured to determine whether maternal administration of antibiotics during a critical window of development in early life has lasting effects on brain and behaviour in offspring mice. To this end we studied two different antibiotic preparations (single administration of Phenoxymethylpenicillin at 31 mg/kg/day; and a cocktail consisting of, ampicillin 1 mg/ml; vancomycin 0.5 mg/ml; metronidazole 1 mg/ml; ciprofloxacin 0.2 mg/ml and imipenem 0.25 mg/ml). It was observed that early life exposure to maternal antibiotics lead to persistent alterations in anxiety, sociability and cognitive behaviours. These effects in general were greater in animals treated with the broad-spectrum antibiotic cocktail compared to an individual antibiotic with the exception of deficits in social recognition which were more robustly observed in Peni...
Source: Behavioural Brain Research - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Behav Brain Res Source Type: research