Maternal exercise before pregnancy alleviates periventricular leukomalacia by lipopolysaccharide-induced maternal intrauterine inflammation in infant rat brain

Abstract

In the present study, we investigated the effects of maternal exercise before pregnancy on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced hypomyelination and astrogliosis in neonatal rats. Female Sprague-Dawley rats (180 ± 10 g, 8 weeks old, n = 45) were used for maternal rats in this experiment. Before pregnancy, rats were randomly divided into three groups: the non-ex-control (CON) group, non-ex-LPS (LPS) group, and the Pre-ex-LPS (Ex-LPS) group (n = 15 in each group). The rats in the Ex-LPS group were forced to run on a motorized treadmill for 30 min once a day for 4 weeks. After the completion of exercise, all rats were allowed to mate with male rats for a period of 24 h. After conforming of pregnancies (n = 5 in each group), the maternal rats were treated with 0.15 mg/kg LPS and/or the same amount of pyrogen-free saline (PFS) on the 15th, 17th, and 20th day of pregnancy. The expression of Cyclooxygenasee-2 (COX-2) and Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) in brain was analyzed by RT-PCR. Immunohistochemistry for the glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and myelin basic protein (MBP) in the corpus callosum were conducted. In results, the expressions of COX-2, TNF-α and GFAP was significantly increased while the expression of MBP was significantly decreased in the neonatal rat brain of the LPS group compared to those of the CON group (p