Stress during gestation induces lasting effects on emotional reactivity of the dam rat

Human and animal studies indicate that repeated stress during pregnancy can produce long-term biological and behavioural disorders in the offspring. In contrast, although maternal stress is supposed to induce an increase of maternal anxiety, few studies have been conducted to demonstrate it. Therefore, in the present study we examined the emotional reactivity in stressed (chronic restraint stress applied 3× 45 min per day during the last week of pregnancy) and unstressed females rats after the weaning of their pups. Restraint stress procedure reduced the body weight gain both during pregnancy and up to four weeks after the stress period. Stressed dams presented a reduction of exploration and of corticosterone levels when exposed to a novel environment (25 and 49 days post-stress). They spent less time in the open arms of the elevated plus-maze (26 days post-stress). Finally, they showed no increase in the time spent in immobility after a second exposure to the forced-swim test (35–36 days post-stress). In the contrary, such differences were not observed when the chronic stress procedure was applied on virgin females. Overall, our results show that, chronic stress during gestation induces lasting effects on emotional reactivity of the dams, thus indicating that gestation constitutes a critical period in the vulnerability to stressful events also for the mother.