Combined Effect of Maternal Separation and Early-Life Immune Activation on Brain and Behaviour of Rat Offspring

Adversity during early life, a critical period for brain development, increases vulnerability and can have a lasting impact on the brain and behaviour of a child. However, the long-term effects of cumulative early-life stressors on brain and behaviour are not well known. We studied a 2-hit rat model of early-life adversity using maternal separation (MS) and immune activation (lipopolysaccharide (LPS)). Rat pups underwent MS for 15 (control) or 180 (MS) minutes per day from postnatal day (P)2-14 and were administered saline or LPS (intraperitoneal) on P3. Open-field (OFT) and object-place recognition tests were performed on rat offspring at P33-35 and P42-50, respectively. The pre-frontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus were removed at the experimental endpoint (P52-55) for mRNA expression. MS induced anxiety-like behaviour in OFT in male and reduced locomotor activity in both male and female offspring. LPS induced a subtle decline in memory in the object-place recognition test in male offspring. MS increased glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor expression in PFC and ionised calcium-binding adapter molecule-1 expression in male hippocampus. MS and LPS resulted in distinct behavioural phenotypes in a sex-specific manner. The combination of MS and LPS had a synergistic effect on the anxiety-like behaviour, locomotor activity, and GFAP mRNA expression outcomes.