Abstract
The use of methamphetamine (MA) among pregnant women is an increasing world-wide health problem. Prenatal MA exposure may cause changes in foetus but the exact effects have remained unclear. The aim of this study is to present the effect of prenatal MA exposure on recognition memory in adult rats. Adult female Wistar rats were injected daily with D-methamphetamine HCl (MA; 5 mg/kg, s.c.) during the entire gestation period. Control females were treated with saline in the same regime. Adult male offspring was administrated acutely by MA (1 mg/kg i.p.) or saline 30 minutes before beginning of an experiment. For testing recognition memory two tasks were chosen: Novel Object Recognition Test (NORT) and Object Location Test (OLT). Our results demonstrate that prenatally MA-exposed animals were worse in NORT independently on an acute administration of MA in adulthood. Prenatally MA-exposed rats did not deteriorate in OLT, but after acute administration of MA in adulthood, there was significant worsening compared to appropriate control. Prenatally saline-exposed offspring did not deteriorate in any test even after acute administration of MA. Our data suggest that prenatal MA exposure in rats cause impairment in recognition memory in adult offspring, but not in spatial memory. In addition, acute administration of MA to controls did not deteriorate either recognition or spatial memory.
Highlights
Methamphetamine (MA) is one of the top illicit drug threats worldwide
We suggest that prenatal MA exposure in rats cause impairment in recognition memory and inability to concentrate themselves on the task adult offspring.The data from Novel Object Recognition Test (NORT) showed significant decrease of ability to recognize the new object in adult Wistar rats, which were prenatally influenced by daily injection of MA
It could indicate that prenatal MA exposure deteriorates only recognition memory, but not the spatial memory.This finding could be endorsed by results of the study of Broadbent et al (2004) which showed that even though both memories, spatial and recognition, are influenced by the hippocampus, recognition memory does not require as much hippocampal tissue as spatial memory.This fact could lead us to the suggestion that prenatal MA exposure may affect other brain structures than the hippocampus
Summary
Methamphetamine (MA) is one of the top illicit drug threats worldwide. According to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) MA was in 2012 the first or second most used illicit drug in 13 of the 15 Asia Pacific countries surveyed and it’s abuse increases more than seven-fold since 2008 (Global SMART Programme, 2013). MA is still the most often used “hard” drug in the Czech Republic (Mravčík et al, 2013). The fact that the abuse of MA among pregnant women rises worldwide may cause health problems of pregnant women and may result in developmental impairments of their children (Plessinger, 1998). Arising evidence suggests that prenatal MA exposure influences a growth of foetus and may lead to a variety of developmental, behavioural, and neurological abnormalities (Kwiatkowski et al, 2014)
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