| Maternal overnutrition during pre- and post-(peri)natal periods of development has previously been suggested to increase offspring risk for developing psychiatric disorders. The mental impacts are often accompanied by altered expressions of glucocorticoid receptors (GR), which regulate the inflammatory response to stress. In this study, rats were acutely injected with corticosterone (CORT) and/or lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in adulthood after perinatal exposure to maternal high-fat diet (HFD) to examine its effects on responding to stress. Gene transcript analyses in the amygdala and hippocampus revealed higher immunosuppressive activity and altered abundance of genes associated with anxiety- and depressive-like behavior compared to rats perinatally exposed to standard diets. These effects were sex and brain region-specific, and appeared to coincide with levels of GR. Epigenetic analyses suggest impairments in the DNA methylation machinery to be related to these diet differences. Hence, perinatal HFD incurs differential immune responses to stress in the rodent brain. |
