Gestational stress disrupts the neuroimmune environment in the nucleus accumbens of maternal rats.

ABSTRACT: Postpartum depression (PPD) affects 20 % of new mothers. Little is known about what contributes to this prevalence, though one of the strongest risk factors for developing PPD is stress during pregnancy. Pregnancy and the postpartum period are accompanied by dramatic changes in the endocrine, nervous, and immune systems, which may confer heightened vulnerability to maternal mental illness. Microglia, the brain's main immune cells, are important for displaying maternal behaviors. Environmental insults to microglia, such as stress, lead to hormonal dysregulation and aberrant synaptic pruning, both of which have been implicated in the pathophysiology of mood disorders like depression. Given these links, we hypothesized that stress during pregnancy would lead to dysregulated neuroimmune and en

SUBMITTER: Dye CN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12719044 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature