Maternal stress induced anxiety-like behavior exacerbated by electromagnetic fields radiation in female rats offspring

Abstract

There is a disagreement on whether extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields (ELF-EMF) have a beneficial or harmful effect on anxiety-like behavior. Prenatal stress induces frequent disturbances in offspring physiology such as anxiety-like behavior extending to adulthood. This study was designed to evaluate the effects of prenatal stress and ELF-EMF exposure before and during pregnancy on anxiety-like behavior and some anxiety-related pathways in the hippocampus of female rat offspring. A total of 24 female rats 40 days of age were distributed into four groups of 6 rats each: control, Stress (rats whose mothers underwent chronic stress), EMF (rats whose mothers were exposed to electromagnetic fields) and EMF/S (rats whose mothers were simultaneously exposed to chronic stress and ELF-EMF). The rats were given elevated plus-maze and open field tests and then their brains were dissected and their hippocampus were subjected to analysis. ELISA was used to measure 24(S)-hydroxy cholesterol, corticosterone, and serotonin levels. Cryptochrome2, steroidogenic acute regulatory protein, 3B-Hydroxy steroid dehydrogenase, N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor 2(NMDAr2) and phosphorylated N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor 2(PNMDAr2) were assayed by immunoblotting. Anxiety-like behavior increased in all treatment groups at the same time EMF increased anxiety induced by maternal stress in the EMF/S group. The stress group showed decreased serotonin and increased corticosterone levels. ELF-EMF elevated the PNMDAr2/NMDAr2 ratio and 24(S)-hydroxy cholesterol compared to the control group but did not change corticosterone. EMF did not restore changes induced by stress in behavioral and molecular tests. The results of the current study, clarified that ELF-EMF can induce anxiety-like behavior which may be attributed to an increase in the PNMDAr2/NMDAr2 ratio and 24(S)-OHC in the hippocampus, and prenatal stress may contribute to anxiety via a decrease in serotonin and an increase in corticosterone in the hippocampus. We also found that anxiety-like behavior induced by maternal stress exposure, is exacerbated by electromagnetic fields radiation.

Effect of prenatal stress and extremely low‐frequency electromagnetic fields on anxiety‐like behavior in female rats: With an emphasis on prefrontal cortex and hippocampus

“…In the present study, we examined the effects of PS, ELF‐EMF, and simultaneously PS and ELF‐EMF on anxiety‐like behaviors, and expression of synaptic plasticity associated proteins (BDNF and GAP‐43) and neural cell apoptotic factor, cas‐3. As it was depicted previously (Hosseini et al., 2022 ), we observed that ELF‐EMF and stress groups showed anxiety‐like behavior. We found that female offspring which their mothers underwent PS and ELF‐EMF together, showed severe anxiety‐like behaviors, which were more intensive than those whose mother experienced only PS (group stress) or only ELF‐EMF (group ELF‐EMF).…”

“…Each week the stress procedure consists of eight different stress modes (Table 1 ) (Hosseini et al., 2022 ): two periods of stroboscopic lighting (300 flash/min), one period of dry cage, two periods of noise (80 db), two periods of 45° cage tilt, one period of pair housing, and periods of water and food deprivation in which water deprivation was empty water bottles and food deprivation was followed by limited food intake (Hosseini et al., 2022 ; Salehpour et al., 2016 ).…”

“…The strength of the ELF-EMF was 100 µT in the homogenous zone. In this study the induced current was 50 Hz at an intensity of 100 µT (Hosseini et al, 2022;Podaru et al, 2015).…”

The endocannabinoid system is involved in the anxiety-like behavior induced by dual-frequency 2.65/0.8 GHz electromagnetic radiation in mice

“…Data are expressed as means ± SEM, *p < 0.05, unpaired t-test. It has been reported that the EMR activates the HPA axis (Gupta et al, 2019) and its receptors (Hosseini et al, 2022), influencing neurotransmitter release by activating voltage-gated calcium channels and elevating intracellular calcium levels (Pall, 2016;Othman et al, 2017) in mice. In this study, we observed a significant increase in serum CORT and CRH levels in mice following long-term exposure to dual-frequency EMR, suggesting an association between anxietylike behavior and activated HPA axis.…”