Growth of functional cranial components in rats submitted to intergenerational undernutrition

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to discover how intergenerational undernutrition affects the growth of major and minor functional cranial components in two generations of rats. Control animals constituted the parental generation (P). The undernourished generations (F1 and F2) were fed 75% of the control diet. Animals were X-rayed every 10 days from 20 to 100 days of age. The length, width and height of the major (neurocranium and splanchnocranium) and minor (anterior-neural, middle-neural, posterior-neural, otic, respiratory, masticatory and alveolar) cranial components were measured on each radiograph. Volumetric indices were calculated to estimate size variations of these components. Data were processed using the Kruskal-Wallis and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests for two samples. Impairment in splanchnocranial and neurocranial growth was found, the latter being more affected than the former in F1. Comparison between F2 and F1 animals showed cumulative effects of undernutrition in both major and minor components (anterior-neural, respiratory, masticatory and alveolar in males, and middle-neural and respiratory in females). Such differential effects on minor components may reflect a residual mechanical strain resulting from the linkage between components. This phenomenon was clearly observed in the neurocranium and could be understood as an adaptive response to the demands of the associated functional matrices.

The role of diet and temperature in shaping cranial diversification of South American human populations: an approach based on spatial regression and divergence rate tests

“…, 2007). Size changes related to increased consumption of carbohydrates have also been widely documented among extant human populations (Frisancho, 2009) and rodents (Pucciarelli, 1980; Pucciarelli & Oyhenart, 1987; Cesani et al. , 2006).…”

Influence of PCPA and MDMA (ecstasy) on physiology, development and behavior in Drosophila melanogaster

“…Statistically, we wished to determine if the distribution of pupation and eclosion times differed across the treatment groups (controls vs. different doses of PCPA vs. different doses of MDMA). A common method of testing whether distributions are equal is a Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test (Cesani et al, 2006;Mentre & Escolano, 2006). The KS test is based on determining the largest deviation between the observed distributions (usually called the 'D-statistic') and then comparing that difference with the known distribution of the difference given that the distributions are, in fact, equal.…”

“…Statistically, we wished to determine if the distribution of pupation and eclosion times differed across the treatment groups (controls vs. different doses of PCPA vs. different doses of MDMA). A common method of testing whether distributions are equal is a Kolmogorov‐Smirnov (KS) test (Cesani et al. , 2006; Mentre & Escolano, 2006).…”

Fetal stress and programming of hypoxic/ischemic-sensitive phenotype in the neonatal brain: Mechanisms and possible interventions

“…Additionally, maternal undernutrition may affect sensorimotor functions via its action on the CNS (Sanches et al ., 2011; Ba, 2005), the growth of major and minor cranial components (Cesani et al ., 2006), the structure of the brain (Torres et al ., 2010), and brain development itself (Melse-Boonstra et al ., 2010; Ohishi et al ., 2010; Ranade et al ., 2011). Maternal malnutrition may selectively decrease the number of neurons in some regions of the hippocampus, for example, CA2, CA4 and DG but not in CA1 and CA3 (Florian et al ., 2010).…”