UNews - chronic stress

Dads' impact on kids' development deeper than we think

trevor.kenney — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 17:18:50 +0000

We all know a baby’s health is inextricably linked to the lifestyle of the mother prenatally and while pregnant. But what’s less understood is the impact of the essential but often neglected half of this reproductive equation — the father, and his own preconception behaviours.

Dr. Robbin Gibb studies what happens to a father’s offspring when he is exposed to chronic stress right before they are conceived.

It’s a topic being investigated by Dr. Robbin Gibb, a researcher and professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge who is interested in how a male’s pre-reproduction lifestyle affects his kids’ epigenetics, or the expression of their genes. Specifically, she is studying the influence of paternal stress and the usage of alcohol and prescription drugs during this time period. Her findings so far confirm dads play a much bigger role than we ever imagined in a baby’s brain development and behaviour.

“We have this huge focus on mothers and their babies, and I think that’s appropriate, but why on earth don’t we ever consider what happens to the father preconception? It turns out the father’s lifestyle during this time has a huge influence on the outcomes and success of their children,” says Gibb, whose research is funded by a five-year, $120,000 grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Gibb has studied what happens to a father’s offspring when he is exposed to chronic stress right before they are conceived. Rat experiments she performed at her lab in U of L’s Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience showed the babies were more anxious, and also had a harder time performing certain tasks. Their brains also had significant differences in DNA methylation, a process that affects how our genes regulate development and disease. Her study, which was published last year in Neuroscience, theorized chronic stress modified the epigenetic expression of genes in maturing sperm, which in turn shaped gene expression and development in the embryo.

In another of Gibb’s studies, led by graduate student Allonna Harker, rats born to fathers who had consumed excessive alcohol for about a month preconception had lifelong issues with motor development and anxiety. Interestingly, when these same fathers were then deprived of alcohol for 45 days and mated again, their babies had worse anxiety and motor skills than those in the preceding litter.

“None of the sperm that were produced at the time when the dad was on alcohol would have been there, so we think we must have changed sperm precursors, so that they still carried instructions to the egg that affected gene expression in their offspring,” says Gibb on the initial findings of this ongoing study.

Finally, Gibb is also researching the impact on offspring of a father’s preconception consumption of the antidepressant Prozac. When male rats were given the drug for 45 days before mating, their offspring showed more anxious behaviour. Her preliminary results show this anxiety manifesting in the babies’ early stages of life; she will now explore if it persists throughout their lifespan.

A mother of two, Gibb had long been curious her and her husband’s impact on their children’s development, which is what sparked her interest in this research area. She hopes her findings compel medical professionals and policymakers to take a more inclusive approach to counselling services and public awareness campaigns geared at aspiring parents.

“Fathers need to be embraced as an important element in family. That means we need parental institutes and resources, not just maternal ones,” Gibb says. “We need to advise prospective fathers in the same way as we do the mothers about how their lifestyle can influence their babies.”

Study to examine how social and economic stressors affect Aboriginal health

trevor.kenney — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 17:03:05 +0000

In a first-of-its-kind study, ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers are examining how the social and economic adversity faced by Aboriginal peoples may affect their biological health.

This new study, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, will be co-lead by three researchers at the U of L, pulling together research strengths from health sciences, kinesiology and neuroscience.

"Aboriginal populations experience high levels of chronic stress as they are often marginalized both socially and economically in Canada. We know that over time, high unrelenting stress can have a profound influence on biological systems," says study Co-Lead, Dr. Cheryl Currie, who is a public health researcher at the U of L.

Stressful experiences are an inevitable part of life, but repeated and chronic exposure to uncontrollable stressors can disrupt the function of neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, and immune systems. Markers of biological disruption can be identified well before the clinical markers of disease are detected.

"We tend to think about social and biological determinants of health separately. Connecting the two is a more comprehensive way to think about health- and may shed new light on why Aboriginal populations are disproportionately affected by chronic disease," says study Co-Lead, Dr. Jennifer Copeland, a U of L kinesiology researcher.

The study will also build on past research by Currie indicating that Aboriginal cultural practices promote resilience against alcohol and drug abuse within Aboriginal populations. In this new study, the team will examine the extent to which Aboriginal cultural practices may promote biologic resilience and improve health. Further, the study will examine the ways in which western approaches to wellness, such as regular physical activity, may also promote resiliency in these populations.

Dr. Gerlinde Metz, a neuroscientist at the U of L's Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience and Co-Lead on the study says understanding the biological effects of adverse social conditions is an important step towards the development of interventions that can improve population health and wellness.

"Information gained from the study will be used to help identify new strategies that can reduce health disparities experienced by Aboriginal populations," says Metz.

The full research team includes Drs. Judith Kulig, Michelle Hogue, and Olu Awosoga from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, and Dr. David Olsen from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta. Working together with the Aboriginal community in southern Alberta, this cross-disciplinary team will examine how a range of factors - including adverse childhood experiences, poverty, unemployment, single parenthood, living in overcrowded housing and racial discrimination - impact the stress response and biological functioning among Aboriginal adults living in the Lethbridge area.

The U of L study will commence October 2013 with results expected in 2016-17.

Brain cell re-growth confirmed at CCBN

trevor.kenney — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:02:34 +0000

A research team at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge's Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience has confirmed -- through extensive research and peer-reviewed testing -- the world's first successful example of brain cell re-growth in an adult mammal.

CCBN Researcher Robert Sutherland, postdoctoral trainee Jen Lai , and doctoral candidates Simon Spanswick and Fraser Sparks -- along with a large number of undergraduate and graduate student assistants -- spent the past five years on a project funded by the Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) to refine a definitive demonstration to confirm how cortical cells can be encouraged to re-grow in the adult brain.

The implications are significant for further research into dementia-related diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease, involving death of cerebral cortex cells, which affects thousands of people each year in Canada.

Other diseases that can have memory deficit at their core include stroke, the side-effects of most cancer therapies, epilepsy, chronic stress and substance abuse. Their funding was recently renewed by the CIHR at more than $680,000 over the next five years to continue the project.

"At the current rate, in 30 years someone will develop dementia every two minutes," Sutherland said.

"The total cost of dementia could reach $153 billion dollars per year by 2038, up from the current cost of $15 billion dollars per year. Without fundamental scientific advances such as ours, it is certain that the burdens will grow dramatically. It is urgent that we find ways of preventing, reversing, and repairing injured brains, and our findings are a significant advance in that direction."

Sutherland stressed that at this time the research focuses on the reliability of a specific method to re-grow damaged cells in the hippocampus -- and while successful in rats, requires significant further research to be useful to humans in the future.

"Re-growing brain cells has been a central challenge in neuroscience and has been explored in many forms since the late 19th century," Sutherland said.

We took the approach that we should look for a simple way to prove that cells can be re-grown and restore lost functions."

The researchers focused on the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped area of the brain which is responsible for short and long-term memory storage and retrieval.

"The hippocampus is very similar in rats and humans, and generally is the part of the brain where cells governing memory die first, or are affected by illness or injury," Sutherland said.

"Another important fact about this part of the hippocampus is that it has the ability to produce a small number of new brain cells, even in adults, so we knew that the process to make cell re-growth happen was there, but was not able to be turned on or increased at will," Sutherland said.

In Sutherland's experiments the loss of cells was caused by eliminating a hormone called corticosterone that is necessary for keeping alive certain brain cells in the hippocampus.

After these cells died Sutherland and his students showed that the rats had memory problems that resemble dementia.

Through a combination of exercise, an enriched living environment, and a specific protein therapy, the rats, when tested on a complicated exercise field, were proven to have fully recovered their memory, and showed regrowth of the damaged hippocampus parts.

Sutherland said people should be heartened by the fact that there is now a lot more definition to the process of testing cell re-growth. "The long-term goals are to develop treatments for cognitive disorders, especially due to anti-cancer therapies, age-related dementias, and related forms of brain injury."

Parts of this research have been presented at several international neuroscience conferences and published in several peer-reviewed journals, referenced below.

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