Resilience to stress and sex-specific remodeling of microglia and neuronal morphology in a rat model of anxiety and anhedonia

• Published in: Neurobiology of stress Vol. 14; p. 100302
• Main Authors: Gaspar, Rita, Soares-Cunha, Carina, Domingues, Ana Verónica, Coimbra, Bárbara, Baptista, Filipa I., Pinto, Luísa, Ambrósio, António F., Rodrigues, Ana João, Gomes, Catarina A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.05.2021; Elsevier
• Subjects: Chronic stress; Dorsal hippocampus; Microglia morphology; Nucleus accumbens; Original; Prenatal stress; Sex; Nucleus accumbens; Microglia morphology; Chronic stress; Sex; Prenatal stress; Dorsal hippocampus
• ISSN: 2352-2895; 2352-2895
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ynstr.2021.100302

Prenatal exposure to stress or glucocorticoids (GC) is associated with the appearance of psychiatric diseases later in life. Microglia, the immune cells of the brain, are altered in stress-related disorders. Synthetic GC such as dexamethasone (DEX) are commonly prescribed in case of preterm risk labour in order to promote fetal lung maturation. Recently, we reported long-lasting differences in microglia morphology in a model of in utero exposure to DEX (iuDEX), that presents an anxious phenotype. However, it is still unclear if stress differentially affects iuDEX males and females. In this work, we evaluated how iuDEX animals of both sexes cope with chronic mild stress for 2 weeks. We evaluated emotional behavior and microglia and neuronal morphology in the dorsal hippocampus (dHIP) and nucleus accumbens (NAc), two brain regions involved in emotion-related disorders. We report that males and females prenatally exposed to DEX have better performance in anxiety- and depression-related behavioral tests after chronic stress exposure in adulthood than non-exposed animals. Interestingly, iuDEX animals present sex-dependent changes in microglia morphology in the dHIP (hypertrophy in females) and in the NAc (atrophy in females and hypertrophy in males). After chronic stress, these cells undergo sex-specific morphological remodeling. Paralleled to these alterations in cytoarchitecture of microglia, we report inter-regional differences in dendritic morphology in a sex-specific manner. iuDEX females present fewer complex neurons in the NAc, whereas iuDEX males presented less complex neuronal morphology in the dHIP. Interestingly, these alterations were modified by stress exposure. Our work shows that stressful events during pregnancy can exert a preserved sex-specific effect in adulthood. Although the role of the observed cellular remodeling is still unknown, sex-specific differences in microglia plasticity induced by long-term stress exposure may anticipate differences in drug efficacy in the context of stress-induced anxiety- or depression-related behaviors. [Display omitted] •iuDEX induces anxiety- and depression-related behavioral in both sexes.•iuDEX induces sex dependent fine structural alterations in neurons and microglia morphology in the dHIP and in the NAc.•uCMS in combination to iuDEX normalize the behavior as well the morphology of neurons in the NAc.•Stressful events during pregnancy can exert a preserved sex-specific effect in adulthood.