Early-life stress and inflammation: A systematic review of a key experimental approach in rodents.
Accepted version
Peer-reviewed
Repository URI
Repository DOI
Change log
Authors
Abstract
Repeated maternal separation is the most widely used pre-clinical approach to investigate the relationship between early-life chronic stress and its neuropsychiatric and physical consequences. In this systematic review, we identified 46 studies that conducted repeated maternal separation or single-episode maternal separation and reported measurements of interleukin-1b, interleukin-6, interleukin-10, tumour necrosis factor-alpha, or microglia activation and density. We report that in the short-term and in the context of later-life stress, repeated maternal separation has pro-inflammatory immune consequences in diverse tissues. Repeated maternal separation animals exhibit greater microglial activation and elevated pro-inflammatory cytokine signalling in key brain regions implicated in human psychiatric disorders. Notably, repeated maternal separation generally has no long-term effect on cytokine expression in any tissue in the absence of later-life stress. These observations suggest that the elevated inflammatory signalling that has been reported in humans with a history of early-life stress may be the joint consequence of ongoing stressor exposure together with potentiated neural and/or immune responsiveness to stressors. Finally, our findings provide detailed guidance for future studies interrogating the causal roles of early-life stress and inflammation in disorders such as major depression.
Description
Keywords
Journal Title
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
2398-2128
Volume Title
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Rights
Sponsorship
Medical Research Council (MR/L014815/1)
Arthritis Research UK (21777)
Wellcome Trust (093875/Z/10/Z)
Medical Research Council (G1000183)
Medical Research Council (MR/N024907/1)
MRC (MR/S006257/1)