Maternal adrenal hormone secretion mediates behavioural alterations induced by prenatal stress in male and female rats

Prenatal stress in rats has been shown to impair the regulation of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis and predispose to anxiogenic and depressive-like behaviour. In a previous study, abolition of excess corticosterone (COR) release during stress by maternal adrenalectomy prevented the dysregulation of the HPA axis. In the present study, we determined whether excess maternal COR is also responsible for the alterations in offspring behaviour. Pregnant Wistar rats were adrenalectomized or sham-operated on day 11 of gestation and subjected once daily to mild restraint for 30 min on days 14–21 of gestation. An undisturbed group of pregnant females served as controls. All experiments were performed in male and female offspring. Pup weight and anogenital distance of males were measured after birth; anxiogenic behaviour was assessed in the elevated plus maze (EPM) at the age of 5 weeks and spatial memory in the Morris water maze in littermates at 3–4 months. Prenatally stressed (PS) males did not show a reduction in anogenital distance, and their increase in anxiogenic behaviour in the EPM was less than that in PS females. On the other hand, impairment of spatial learning was only seen in PS males. Both the anxiogenic behaviour of PS males and females and the learning deficit in males were completely abolished by adrenalectomy. These data show that excess stress-induced COR can alter the programming of the foetal brain and predispose it to alterations in behaviour that are gender specific.