The Effect of Maternal Stress Activation on the Offspring during Lactation in Light of Vasopressin

Although it is obvious that preconceptional effects as well as stressors during pregnancy profoundly influence the progeny, the lactation period seems to be at least as important. Here we summarize how maternal stressors during the lactation period affect the offspring. As vasopressin is one of the crucial components both for stress adaptation and social behavior, special emphasis was given to this neuropeptide. We can conclude that stressing the mother does not have the same acute effect on the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical axis (as the main target of stress adaptation) of the pups as stressing the pups, but later endocrine and behavioral consequences can be similar. Vasopressin plays a role in acute and later consequences of perinatal stressor applied either to the mother or to the offspring, thereby contributing to transmitting the mothers’ stress to the progeny. This mother-infant interaction does not necessarily mean a direct transmission of molecules, but rather is the result of programming the brain development through changes in maternal behavior. Thus, there is a time lag between maternal stress and stress-related changes in the offspring. The interactions are bidirectional as not only stress in the dam but also stress in the progeny has an effect on nursing

Az alacsony alkalikusfoszfatáz-aktivitás klinikai értékelése és differenciáldiagnosztikája

Laboratory diagnostics is especially important in the diagnosis of certain diseases. We compared manual measurements results to laboratory normal values. In some cases, these values depend on the gender and age as well. In the case of alkaline phosphatase, it is rarely considered that reference values change over life periods. Unfortunately, during the daily practice we do not always take into account of the changes with aging. This is especially true if the laboratory does not specify the age related normal values. Another problem that we mostly focus on the results exceeding the normal values, and do not pay enough attention to the low values. Of course, these results should be put in the context of the clinical picture and other diagnostic test results. We would like to draw attention to the measuring of alkaline phosphatase and the differential diagnosis for low serum activity. Orv Hetil. 2017; 158(26): 1003-1007

Conformal or Walking? Monte Carlo renormalization group studies of SU(3) gauge models with fundamental fermions

Strongly coupled gauge systems with many fermions are important in many phenomenological models. I use the 2-lattice matching Monte Carlo renormalization group method to study the fixed point structure and critical indexes of SU(3) gauge models with 8 and 12 flavors of fundamental fermions. With an improved renormalization group block transformation I am able to connect the perturbative and confining regimes of the N_f=8 flavor system, thus verifying its QCD-like nature. With N_f=12 flavors the data favor the existence of an infrared fixed point and conformal phase, though the results are also consistent with very slow walking. I measure the anomalous mass dimension in both systems at several gauge couplings and find that they are barely different from the free field value.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figure

The effects of lactation on impulsive behavior in vasopressin-deficient Brattleboro rats

Vasopressin (AVP)-deficient Brattleboro rats develop a specific behavioral profile, which—among other things—include altered cognitive performance. This profile is markedly affected by alterations in neuroendocrine state of the animal such as during lactation. Given the links between AVP and cognition we hypothesized that AVP deficiency may lead to changes in impulsivity that is under cognitive control and the changes might be altered by lactation. Comparing virgin and lactating AVP-deficient female Brattleboro rats to their respective controls, we assessed the putative lactation-dependent effects of AVP deficiency on impulsivity in the delay discounting paradigm. Furthermore, to investigate the basis of such effects, we assessed possible interactions of AVP deficiency with GABAergic and serotonergic signaling and stress axis activity, systems playing important roles in impulse control. Our results showed that impulsivity was unaltered by AVP deficiency in virgin rats. In contrast a lactation-induced increase in impulsivity was abolished by AVP deficiency in lactating females. We also found that chlordiazepoxide-induced facilitation of GABAergic and imipramine-induced enhancement of serotonergic activity in virgins led to increased and decreased impulsivity, respectively. In contrast, during lactation these effects were visible only in AVP-deficient rats. These rats also exhibited increased stress axis activity compared to virgin animals, an effect that was abolished by AVP deficiency. Taken together, AVP appears to play a role in the regulation of impulsivity exclusively during lactation: it has an impulsivity increasing effect which is potentially mediated via stress axis-dependent mechanisms and fine-tuning of GABAergic and serotonergic function

The effects of vasopressin deficiency on aggression and impulsiveness in male and female rats

The role of vasopressin in aggression received much attention in recent years. However, vasopressin has complex roles on social behavior, which are affected by social experience, motivation and hormonal background, suggesting that its effects depend on the condition of subjects. This hypothesis was tested here by studying the impact of vasopressin deficiency on aggressiveness in reproductively naive and reproductively experienced males, as well as in lactating females, with special reference to the patterns and contexts of attack behavior. We also studied effects on impulsiveness, a behavioral feature strongly related to aggression. Vasopressin deficiency did not affect aggressiveness in reproductively experienced males, decreased the share of violent attacks in reproductively inexperienced males without affecting total attack counts, and suppressed maternal aggression in both early and late phases of lactation; violent forms of attack were decreased in the latter but not the former phase. Changes in aggression appeared unrelated to general changes in maternal behaviors. Impulsivity in the delay discounting task was markedly decreased by vasopressin deficiency in lactating females but not males. Taken together, our findings confirm that vasopressin has an impact on aggressiveness, but show that this impact depends on the condition of subjects, and suggest that the effects of vasopressin on maternal aggression develop in conjunction with impulsivity. Interestingly, overall effects on aggression and specific effects on violent attacks dissociated in both males and females, which hints to the possibility that vasopressin has distinct roles in the development of escalated forms of aggression