Abstract
Postpartum depression is a severe emotional and mental disorder that involves maternal care defects and psychiatric illness. Postpartum depression is closely associated with a combination of physical changes and physiological stress during pregnancy or after parturition in stress-sensitive women. Although postpartum depression is relatively well known to have deleterious effects on the developing fetus, the influence of genetic risk factors on the development of postpartum depression remains unclear. In this study, we discovered a novel function of T cell death-associated gene 51 (TDAG51/PHLDA1) in the regulation of maternal and depressive-like behavior. After parturition, TDAG51-deficient dams showed impaired maternal behavior in pup retrieving, nursing and nest building tests. In contrast to the normal dams, the TDAG51-deficient dams also exhibited more sensitive depressive-like behaviors after parturition. Furthermore, changes in the expression levels of various maternal and depressive-like behavior-associated genes regulating neuroendocrine factor and monoamine neurotransmitter levels were observed in TDAG51-deficient postpartum brain tissues. These findings indicate that TDAG51 plays a protective role against maternal care defects and depressive-like behavior after parturition. Thus, TDAG51 is a maternal care-associated gene that functions as a crucial regulator of maternal and depressive-like behavior after parturition.
Highlights
Maternal behavior represents an instinctive pattern of caring for an offspring by a mother [1]
We observed that the number of surviving pups in the home cages of the T cell death-associated gene 51 (TDAG51)-/- dams was reduced on postnatal day 1 (P1) (Fig 1A)
These results indicate that TDAG51-/- dams may have a severe maternal care defect toward their pups after parturition
Summary
Maternal behavior represents an instinctive pattern of caring for an offspring by a mother [1]. The physical and physiological changes that occur in response to pregnancy and parturition may cause maternal depression, which has deleterious effects on maternal behavior [2]. Postpartum depression is a severe emotional and mental disorder that is becoming a serious social issue; this condition needs adequate attention as it can lead to infant abuse or infanticide caused by deficient or weakened maternal care. The genetic risk factors underlying postpartum depression remain largely unknown, a few gene functions or polymorphisms theoretically linked to an increased risk of postpartum depression have been reported [4, 12,13,14,15,16]. To better understand the underlying causes of postpartum depression based on genetic risk factors, identifying genes or gene functions possibly associated with postpartum depression is necessary
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