Prenatal ethanol exposure induced disorder of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis-associated neuroendocrine metabolic programming alteration and dysfunction of glucose and lipid metabolism in 40-week old female offspring rats.

This study was designed to demonstrate disorder of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis-associated neuroendocrine metabolic programming alteration and dysfunction of glucose and lipid metabolism induced by prenatal ethanol exposure (PEE) in postnatal week 40 (PW40) female offspring rats. Pregnant Wistar rats were administrated 4 g/kg.d ethanol intragastrically from gestational day 11 until term delivery. After weaning, the female offspring were fed with the post-weaning high-fat diet until PW24, and suffered to unpredictable chronic stress (UCS) during PW38-40. Animal serum was collected to examine the changes in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity, glucose and lipid metabolic phenotypes before and after UCS. We found that pups in the PEE group manifested a low birthweight at postnatal week 1 and an early catch-up growth pattern. Furthermore, a low basal activity of HPA axis continued to PW38 in the PEE group. On the basic condition, serum low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) level was significantly increased and serum high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) level was significantly decreased in the PEE group, while serum triglyceride, total cholesterol (TCH), glucose and insulin levels were not significantly changed. Under unpredictable chronic stress, serum insulin in the PEE group was significantly decreased, while the levels of serum triglyceride, TCH, LDL-C, and the ratio of LDL-C/HDL-C were significantly higher than those in the control. These results suggest that PEE increases the dysfunction of glucose and lipid metabolism in PW40 female offspring, which is related to the disorder of HPA axis-associated neuroendocrine metabolic programming alteration.