Abstract
Early life stress (ELS), such as neglect and maltreatment, exhibits a strong impact on the mental and brain development of children. However, it is not fully understood how ELS affects the body and behavior of children. Therefore, in this study, we performed social isolation on weaned pre-adolescent mice and investigated how ELS could affect gut microbiota and mouse behavior. Using the metagenomics approach, we detected an overall ELS-related change in the gut microbiota and identified Bacteroidales and Clostridiales as significantly altered bacterial groups. These metagenomic alterations impaired social behavior in ELS mice, which also correlated with the abundance of Bacteroidales and Clostridiales. Our results demonstrate that ELS alters the gut microbiota and reduces social behavior in adolescent mice.
Highlights
The environment is a crucial factor for providing optimal growth and health conditions for children, including social, cognitive, or immune-system-related aspects [1,2,3,4].In terms of brain development, the childhood environment impacts brain architecture, synaptic plasticity, and mental development [5,6]
We investigated whether the alterations in the gut microbiota correlate with murine social behavior
principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) of metagenome indicated the separation between the control and Early life stress (ELS) clusters (Figure 1B)
Summary
The environment is a crucial factor for providing optimal growth and health conditions for children, including social, cognitive, or immune-system-related aspects [1,2,3,4].In terms of brain development, the childhood environment impacts brain architecture, synaptic plasticity, and mental development [5,6]. The environment is a crucial factor for providing optimal growth and health conditions for children, including social, cognitive, or immune-system-related aspects [1,2,3,4]. Life stress (ELS) suffered during childhood, such as neglect and maltreatment, has a critical influence on the mental and brain development of children [7,8]. The effect of ELS on the growth of children represents a serious problem, as children need to receive necessary healthy inputs during this critical developmental period. Those who do not receive optimal inputs during this period would be affected in the long term
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