Prenatal Exposure to Diazepam Alters Behavioral Development in Rats

Characteristic potentiation of rat locomotion responses and acoustic startle reflexes that normally appear in the third postnatal week was absent in rats exposed to diazepam during the third week of gestation. Loss of these behaviors suggests a long-term effect that may result from changes in cellular development. Tissue undergoing neuronal differentiation may be especially sensitive to drugs that act on the central nervous system, and the period in which differentiation occurs is perhaps critical for the induction of changes that are later expressed as altered behavior.