Journal article
Sex and age-dependent effects of a maternal junk food diet on the mu-opioid receptor in rat offspring
JR Gugusheff, SE Bae, A Rao, IJ Clarke, L Poston, PD Taylor, CW Coen, BS Muhlhausler
Behavioural Brain Research | ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV | Published : 2016
Abstract
Perinatal junk food exposure increases the preference for palatable diets in juvenile and adult rat offspring. Previous studies have implicated reduced sensitivity of the opioid pathway in the programming of food preferences; however it is not known when during development these changes in opioid signalling first emerge. This study aimed to determine the impact of a maternal junk food (JF) diet on mu-opioid receptor (MuR) expression and ligand binding in two key regions of the reward pathway, the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in rats during the early suckling (postnatal day (PND) 1 and 7) and late suckling/early post-weaning (PND 21 and 28) periods. Female rats..
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Awarded by King’s College London
Funding Acknowledgements
This study received support from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council BBD5231861 and the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre based at Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and King's College London. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health. BSM is supported by a Career Development Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC, APP1004211).