Background: Maternal psychosocial stress during fetal brain development results in increased risk for impaired behavioral and emotional development and affective disorders in childre. Controversies exist in literature regarding sexual dimorphism in the effects of prenatal stress on behavioral development. This study was designed with the view to examine the gender- specific effects of chronic maternal stress on hippocampal neuronal cell density in male and female wistar rats at weaning.
Methods: Pregnant wistar rats were subjected to restraint stress from embryonic day 11 till delivery. Male and female rat pups were sacrificed. Brains from different groups were processed for cresyl violet staining on postnatal 22nd day.
Result: It was seen that prenatal stress caused significant reduction in the numerical cell density in CA1, CA3, dentate gyrus and dentate hilar regions of hippocampus in stressed males when compared to the control and did not show any effect on stressed females.
Conclusion: These data reinforce the view that prenatal stress affects cognitive development in a sex-specific manner and the diminished effect seen in females could be due to the oestrogen- mediated neuroprotection on hippocampal function.
