The effects of prenatal PCBs on adult female paced mating reproductive behaviors in rats
Section snippets
Animals
All experimental procedures were performed following protocols approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at the University of Texas at Austin. Timed pregnant Sprague–Dawley rats were purchased from the University of Texas Animal Resources Center and were housed individually under a 12:12 light cycle. Animals were fed low-phytoestrogen rat chow (Harlan Teklad Global Diet 2019) and water ad libitum. Pregnant dams were intraperitoneally injected with 0.1 ml of vehicle (dimethyl
Mating trial pacing
Results on latencies for females to return to the mating chamber after mounts, intromissions, and ejaculations are shown in Fig. 1. Of the behaviors scored, mount-return latency (F(3, 38) = 3.53, p < 0.05) and the post-ejaculatory interval (F(3, 38) = 3.23, p < 0.05) were significantly affected by A1221 treatment (p < 0.05 for both). Post hoc analyses of mount-return latency revealed that the 1 mg/kg group had a longer mount-return latency than the 0.1 mg/kg group (p < 0.05). For post-ejaculatory return
Discussion
We investigated the effects of prenatal PCB exposures on adult female sexual behaviors and observed several endpoints that were significantly altered by A1221 exposure. Overall, we observed the greatest number of effects of the intermediate (1 mg/kg) dosage of A1221, exposure to which affected adult mating trial pacing, receptivity/proximity behaviors, and audible vocalizations compared to control and lower or higher doses of A1221. This suggests the possibility of a non-linear dose response
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge generous support from the PhRMA Foundation (Predoctoral Fellowship to RMS) and the NIEHS (ES12272, ES07784 to ACG). We are grateful to Drs. Marilyn McGinnis and Mary Erskine for valuable advice on the paced mating regime.
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