Full text
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| Author(s): |
Karin Kieling
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Psicologia (IP/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2009-04-09 |
| Examining board members: |
João Palermo Neto;
Luciano Freitas Felicio;
Frederico Azevedo da Costa Pinto
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| Advisor: | João Palermo Neto |
| Abstract | |
As a consequence of his fast development, the fetus is vulnerable to modifications from the hormonal maternal millieu. This is explained mainly by the permeability of the placentary barrier to several hormones and substances. Specifically, it is known that the maternal exposition to a stressor activates neuroendocrine systems (exponents, the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis HPA, and the sympathetic autonomic nervous system SANS), causing an exaggerated production of neuropeptides, which have the potential to change the motherly-fetus homeostasis. When this unbalance occurs in the final three months of pregnancy, it may impact fetal systems that are still being developed/matured, as the immune and nervous systems. According to previous studies, the prenatal-stress proposed in this work was able to produce a significant decrease on innate immunity as assessed by the evaluation of the activity of peritoneal macrophages; it was also, a significant increment in hypothalamic noradrenaline turnover. Such prenatal events, could be derived and/or reflect a lost in adaptative immunity homeostasis. The objective of this work was, thus, to analyze lymphocyte parameters of prenatal stressed mice. A footshock stress (0,2 mA, 10 shocks of 5 seconds each/session) was applied both in the final third of gestation and/or in the postnatal adult life. Those stressors was anable to affect the lymphocytes viability and their subpopulation patterns token from peripheral blood; the esplenic lymphocytes proliferation ratio were also not changed. Those results suggested that: 1- the stress model was not effective; 2- the obtained results reflected the absence of an immune challenge applied previous by the experiments performedb; 3- the existence of physiologic redundancies turns the organisms able to react in a homeostatic way even exposed to stress situations. (AU) | |