Maternal prolactin inhibition at the end of lactation affects learning/memory and anxiety-like behaviors but not novelty-seeking in adult rat progeny

Maternal hypoprolactinemia at the end of lactation in rats reduces milk production and is associated with offspring's malnutrition. Since malnutrition during development is also known to have long lasting effects on cognition and emotion, in the present study we tested the hypothesis that maternal hypoprolactinemia, induced by bromocriptine treatment, at the end of the lactating period affects memory/learning, novelty-seeking and anxiety-like behaviors in adult male Wistar rats using, respectively, the radial arm water maze (RAWM), the hole board (HB) arena and the elevated plus-maze (EPM). We also analyzed serum corticosterone and thyroid hormone levels at postnatal day (PN) 21. Lactating dams were treated with bromocriptine (BRO, 1mg twice a day, inhibiting prolactin) or saline from PN19 to 21 (the last 3 days of lactation). BRO offspring had hypercorticosteronemia and hypothyroidism at PN21. In the RAWM, reductions in latency observed in CON rats were initially more accentuated than in BRO ones. By the end of the testing period, latencies became similar between groups. No difference was observed between groups regarding the number of nose-pokes in the HB. In the EPM, BRO rats stayed less time in and had fewer entries into the open-arms than CON ones. This pattern of results indicates that maternal bromocriptine treatment at the end of the lactating period results in poorer memory/learning performance and in higher levels of anxiety-like behavior in the adult offspring, demonstrating that even a relatively short period of malnutrition during development can have long lasting detrimental effects regarding cognition and emotion.