Deficient maternal care resulting from immunological stress during pregnancy is associated with a sex-dependent enhancement of conditioned fear in the offspring

Table 2 Summary of the effects of the prenatal and postnatal maternal manipulations on the offspring’s performance in the elevated plus maze and open field exploration tests in peri-adolescence

Experiment	Experimental groups (prenatal treatment–postnatal rearing)
Experiment	SAL-SAL	SAL-POL	POL-SAL	POL-POL
Elevated plus maze
Total distance moved (m)	14.10 ± 2.31	15.84 ± 2.04	18.82 ± 3.83	18.27 ± 4.99
Distance moved (m) in open arms	1.17 ± 0.24	1.31 ± 0.18	1.55 ± 0.31	1.56 ± 0.49
Percent open arm entries	29.61 ± 3.82	26.34 ± 1.97	28.24 ± 3.44	24.34 ± 3.60
Percent time spent in open arms	13.17 ± 2.63	9.30 ± 1.22	10.68 ± 2.18	11.72 ± 2.09
Open field
Total distance moved (m)	111.09 ± 8.92	119.67 ± 12.77	117.77 ± 10.38	107.39 ± 8.58
Distance moved (m) in center zone	7.99 ± 0.88	9.24 ± 1.59	9.16 ± 0.96	8.68 ± 1.71
Time in center zone (s)	170.96 ± 21.45	200.04 ± 38.23	195.70 ± 20.36	195.34 ± 49.58
Center zone entries	88 ± 10	106 ± 19	106 ± 11	99 ± 20

SAL-SAL, offspring subjected to prenatal vehicle exposure and raised by vehicle-treated surrogate mothers; SAL-POL, offspring subjected to prenatal vehicle exposure and raised by PolyI:C-treated surrogate mothers; POL-SAL, offspring subjected to prenatal PolyI:C exposure and raised by vehicle-treated surrogate mothers; POL-POL, offspring subjected to prenatal PolyI:C exposure and raised by PolyI:C-treated surrogate mothers. No significant group differences were detected in any of the dependent measures. All values are means±SEM

ISSN: 1866-1955