Immune activation during pregnancy exacerbates ASD-related alterations in Shank3-deficient mice.
Ekaterina Atanasova, Andrea Pérez Arévalo, Ines Graf and 4 others
PMID 36604742WHAT IT FOUND
Pregnant mice given a viral mimic passed genetic autism risk to offspring.
The pups showed worse social deficits and repetitive grooming than those with just the gene mutation. This suggests immune stress during pregnancy can worsen specific autism traits in vulnerable individuals.
Key findings
01Offspring with both a Shank3 gene deletion and prenatal immune activation showed aggravated core autism symptoms, specifically deficits in sociability and social novelty recognition, which were not seen in mice with the gene deletion alone.
02These two-hit mice spent significantly more time self-grooming compared to wild-type and single-hit controls, indicating an increase in repetitive behaviors.
03While core symptoms worsened, comorbidities like motor coordination deficits and anxiety-like behavior were not further aggravated by the combination of genetic and environmental factors.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This is an animal study using mice, so findings do not directly translate to human clinical practice. The study focused only on male offspring, so it is unclear if the same effects occur in females. The mechanism behind the behavioral changes is not fully understood; the authors speculate about synaptic protein levels but did not measure actual neural function. The immune response in the mothers was severe, causing high rates of miscarriage, which raises questions about how this specific level of inflammation relates to typical human pregnancy infections.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the European Commission and Universität Ulm. The authors declared no other conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret these results as evidence that preventing viral infections in human pregnancy will change autism outcomes in children. This is a preclinical model using a synthetic immune trigger in mice, and the specific genetic and environmental interactions observed here have not been tested in humans.