Chronic cortisol exposure in early development leads to neuroendocrine dysregulation in adulthood.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Chronic early life stress can affect development of the neuroendocrine stress system, leading to its persistent dysregulation and consequently increased disease risk in adulthood. One contributing factor is thought to be epigenetic programming in response to chronic cortisol exposure during early development. We have previously shown that zebrafish embryos treated chronically with cortisol develop into adults with constitutively elevated whole-body cortisol and aberrant immune gene expression. Here we further characterize that phenotype by assessing persistent effects of the treatment on cortisol tissue distribution and dynamics, chromatin accessibility, and activities of glucocorticoid-responsive regulatory genes klf9 and fkbp5. To that end cortisol levels in different t

SUBMITTER: Hartig EI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7398215 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature