Development
Author: Claudio Dario Barrios | email: Claudiobarrios@outlook.com
Claudio Dario Barrios 1°, Amaicha Depino 1°, Evelin Elia 1°, Claudio Barrios 2°, Amaicha Depino 3°, Evelin Elia 3°
1° IFIBYNE
2° FBMC
3° DBBE
Malnutrition compromises both undernutrition and overweight/obesity, and they are both known to alter development and affect multiple systems. In the recent years a new phenomenon has been observed specially in developing countries: the doble burden of malnutrition (DBM). DBM consists of children suffering from undernutrition during their early stages of development followed by overweight/obesity later in life. To date there is no animal model that recapitulates DBM and allows to study its effects on metabolism and neurodevelopment In this work we attempted to generate a mouse model of DBM by combining maternal separation from postnatal day (P) 5 to P21 (undernutrition) and cafeteria diet from P21 to adulthood (obesity). We observed a decrease in weight and size during maternal separation, followed by a steep gain of weight in animals offered with cafeteria diet. We then subjected adult animals to a battery of behavioral tests and found no differences in anxiety and depression-related behaviors. Further characterization of behavior, metabolism and endocrine function will be necessary to identify the long-lasting effect of DBM.