Maternal immune activation as an epidemiological risk factor for neurodevelopmental disorders: Considerations of timing, severity, individual differences, and sex in human and rodent studies

Frontiers in Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Jaclyn M. Schwarz¹  Elina L. Rodriguez¹  Daria E. Willis¹  Mary Beth Hall² 

[1] Schwarz Lab, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, United States;null;

关键词: neurodevelopmental disorders;    maternal immune activation;    perinatal period;    development;    individual differences;    sex differences;    autism spectrum disorder;    schizophrenia;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnins.2023.1135559

 received in 2023-01-01, accepted in 2023-03-13,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Epidemiological evidence suggests that one’s risk of being diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD)—such as autism, ADHD, or schizophrenia—increases significantly if their mother had a viral or bacterial infection during the first or second trimester of pregnancy. Despite this well-known data, little is known about how developing neural systems are perturbed by events such as early-life immune activation. One theory is that the maternal immune response disrupts neural processes important for typical fetal and postnatal development, which can subsequently result in specific and overlapping behavioral phenotypes in offspring, characteristic of NDDs. As such, rodent models of maternal immune activation (MIA) have been useful in elucidating neural mechanisms that may become dysregulated by MIA. This review will start with an up-to-date and in-depth, critical summary of epidemiological data in humans, examining the association between different types of MIA and NDD outcomes in offspring. Thereafter, we will summarize common rodent models of MIA and discuss their relevance to the human epidemiological data. Finally, we will highlight other factors that may interact with or impact MIA and its associated risk for NDDs, and emphasize the importance for researchers to consider these when designing future human and rodent studies. These points to consider include: the sex of the offspring, the developmental timing of the immune challenge, and other factors that may contribute to individual variability in neural and behavioral responses to MIA, such as genetics, parental age, the gut microbiome, prenatal stress, and placental buffering.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Hall, Willis, Rodriguez and Schwarz.