Faculty Collaboration Database

Corticosterone, Adrenal, and the Pituitary-Gonadal Axis in Neonatal Rats: Effect of Maternal Separation and Hypoxia. Endocrinology 2020 Jul 01;161(7)

Date

05/28/2020

Pubmed ID

32459830

Pubmed Central ID

PMC7310600

DOI

10.1210/endocr/bqaa085

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-85087096075 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   6 Citations

Abstract

Hypoxia, a common stressor in prematurity, leads to sexually dimorphic, short- and long-term effects on the adult hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axes. We hypothesized that these effects are due to stress-induced increases in testosterone during early postnatal life. We evaluated this phenomenon by systematically assessing the short-term effects of normoxic or hypoxic separation on male and female pups at birth, postnatal hours (H) 2, 4, and 8, and postnatal days (PD) 2 to 7. Our findings were (a) hypoxic separation led to a large increase in plasma corticosterone from 4H-PD4, (b) neither normoxic nor hypoxic separation affected critical adrenal steroidogenic pathway genes; however, a significant decrease in baseline Cyp11a1, Mc2r, Mrap, and Star adrenal expression during the first week of neonatal life confirmed the start of the adrenal stress hyporesponsive period, (c) a luteinizing hormone/follicle-stimulating hormone-independent increase in plasma testosterone occurred in normoxic and hypoxic separated male pups at birth, (d) testicular Cyp11a1, Lhcgr, and Star expression was high at birth and decreased thereafter suggesting a hyporesponsive period in the testes, and (e) elevated estrogen in the early neonatal period occurred independently of gonadotropin stimulation. We conclude that a large corticosterone response to hypoxia during the first 5 days of life occurs as an adaptation to neonatal stress, that the testosterone surge during the first hours after birth occurs independently of gonadotropins but is associated with upregulation of the steroidogenic pathway genes in the testes, and that high postnatal estrogen production also occurs independently of gonadotropins.

Author List

Gehrand AL, Phillips J, Malott K, Raff H

Author

Hershel Raff PhD Professor in the Academic Affairs department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Adrenal Glands
Animals
Animals, Newborn
Estradiol
Female
Gonadotropins, Pituitary
Hypoxia
Male
Maternal Deprivation
Rats
Testis
Testosterone