Effects Of Prolonged Selenium Deficiency On Neural Behavior Development And Neural Differentiated Protein Expression In Hippocampus Of F344 Offspring Rats

Background and ObjectivesSelenium (Se) is an essential trace element for mammals. Se deficiency could reduce activities of selenoenzymes and cause a series of functional impairment as results. Influence of Se-deficiency on nervous system has aroused more and more researchers' attention.In our previous studies, we established prolonged Se-, I-deficient diets fed SD rat animal model in serials. It spent almost two years that the rat model had been bred to the fourth generation. In our study, we found that Se-deficient rats of F3 and F4 had displayed delayed physique growth and neural behavior, some effects on EGFR/MAPK signal conduction pathway in some degree, but no significant effects on abilities of learning and memory in Morris water maze etc.Based on these findings, we established Se-deficient animal model on F344 inbred line rats by feeding dams on Se-deflcient diet in order to simulate prolonged impairment of people who had lived in Se-, I-deficient areas for generations, especially neurological functional lesion of their offspring. In this study, behavioral functions and antioxidase activities in blood of offsring rats (P4, P7, P14, P21) were evaluated. The effects of Se deficiency on abilities of learning and memory in Morris water maze, brain morphological development, expression of neural precursor cells marked protein (nestin), proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), neuroglial correlative differentiated protein, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and 2', 3'-cyclic nucleotide 3'-phosphohydrolase (CNPase) expression in hippocampus of the offspring were...