BACKGROUND/PURPOSE The rationale for in utero repair of myelomeningocele has been supported experimentally by the observation of preserved neural function after prenatal closure of surgically created defects compared with nonrepaired controls. The mechanism of injury to the exposed neural elements is unknown. Postulated mechanisms include trauma to the herniated neural elements or progressive i...

Prenatal stress (PS) and early postnatal environment may alter maternal care. Infant rats learn to identify their mother through the association between maternal care and familiar odors. Female Wistar rats were exposed to restraint stress for 30 min, 4 sessions per day, in the last 7 days of pregnancy. At birth, pups were cross-fostered and assigned to the following groups: prenatal non-stresse...

INTRODUCTION Branched chain fatty acids (BCFA) are found in the normal term human newborn's gut, deposited as major components of vernix caseosa ingested during late fetal life. We tested the hypothesis that premature infants' lack of exposure to gastrointestinal (GI) BCFA is associated with their microbiota and risk for necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) using a neonatal rat model. METHODS Pups...

Objective(s): Smoking opium/cigarette is a global health concern. The aim of this study was to examine learning and memory of rat male offsprings whose mothers had been exposed to either opium or morphine with nicotine during pregnancy. Materials and Methods: Wistar rats were used for the experiments. In the female rats, opium, morphine and nicotine dependencies were induced by daily injection...

Preterm infants undergo several painful procedures during their stay in neonatal intensive care units. Previous studies suggest that early painful experiences may have an impact on brain development. Here, we used an animal model to investigate the effect of neonatal pain on the generation of new neurons in the dentate gyrus region of the hippocampus. Rat pups received intraplantar injections o...

Huddling, or clumping behavior, begins in the litter situation and persists throughout the adult life of the rat (Rattus norvegicus). In pups, as in adults, the behavior provides a metabolically important means of reducing heat loss. The sensory stimuli that elicit, direct, and maintain huddling in developing rat pups (5-20 days of age) were studied in a standardized testing situation by using ...

AIM To investigate whether gut maturation could be induced precociously in an athymic T-cell deficient neonatal rat model. METHODS Fourteen day-old athymic (nude) rats (NIH-Foxn1rnu) were gavaged with either phytohaemagglutinin - a lectin from red kidney beans (PHA); trypsin - a protease (Prot); or water - vehicle (control) as a single dose on one day or once a day for 3-day. The nude rats we...

Rat pups of all ages huddle with conspecifics, but the senosory control of contact behavior changes ontogenetically. Thermal cues control huddling until about Day 15, at which time species' odors become the dominant stimulus. The present experiments indicate that the filial response to conspecifics is dependent on olfactory experience. A synthetic chemical scent was added to the smells of the d...

OBJECTIVE: To verify the effects of malnutrition and nutritional rehabilitation regarding seizure threshold, body weight and brain weight in rats. METHODS: Pregnant Wistar rats and their pups were used. Part of the rat pups were submitted to a malnutrition protocol and the rest served as nourished controls. At P15, malnourished and control rats were submitted to status epilepticus induced by fl...

A recent European Respiratory Journal article by WOYDA et al. [1] discussed the effect of a phosphodiesterase (PDE)4 inhibitor, cilomilast, on alveolarisation in mouse pups exposed to hyperoxia. WOYDA et al. [1] claimed in the title and concluded in the text that this treatment had the beneficial effect of preventing hyperoxia-induced impairment of alveolarisation, and proposed that PDE4 inhibi...