Exposure to stress is recognized to be a triggering factor in several mood disorders, including depression and anxiety. There is very little understanding of why female subjects have a significantly higher risk for these conditions than males. Recent findings in male rodents indicated that prophylactic ketamine can prevent the development of a stress-induced depressive-like phenotype, providing a pharmacological tool to study the mechanisms underlying stress resilience. Unfortunately, none of these studies incorporated female subjects, nor did they provide a mechanistic understanding of the effects of ketamine on stress resilience. Our previous work identified the prefrontal glutamatergic and parvalbumin (PV) systems as potential molecular mechanisms underlying sex differences in susceptibility to stress-induced emotional deregulations. To further address this point, we treated male and female mice with a single dose of ketamine before exposure to a chronic stress paradigm to determine whether stressresilience induced by a pre-exposure to ketamine is similar in males and females and whether modulation of the prefrontal glutamatergic and PV systems by ketamine is associated with these behavioral effects. Ketamine prevented chronic stress-induced changes in behaviors in males, which was associated with a reduction in expression of PV and the NMDA receptor NR1 subunit. Ketamine did not protect females against the effects of chronic stress and did not change significantly prefrontal gene expression. Our data highlight fundamental sex differences in the sustained effects of ketamine. They also further implicate prefrontal glutamatergic transmission and PV in resilience to chronic stress.

An important entraining signal for the endogenous circadian clock, independent of light, is food intake. The circadian and immune systems are linked; forced desynchrony of the circadian clock via nighttime light exposure or genetic ablation of core clock components impairs immune function. The timing of food intake affects various aspects of the circadian clock, but its effects on immune function are unknown. We tested the hypothesis that temporal desynchrony of food intake alters innate immune responses. Adult male Swiss Webster mice were provided with food during the night, the day, or ad libitum for 4 wk, followed by administration of LPS prior to the onset of either the active phase (zeitgeber time [ZT]12: Experiment 1) or the inactive phase (ZT0: Experiment 2). Three hours after LPS administration, blood was collected, and serum was tested for bacteria-killing capacity against , as a functional assay of immune function. Additionally, cytokine expression was examined in the serum (protein), spleen, and hypothalamus (mRNA). Day-fed mice suppressed bacteria-killing capacity and serum cytokine responses to LPS during the active phase (ZT12). Night-fed mice increased bactericidal capacity, as well as serum and hypothalamic mRNA responses of certain proinflammatory cytokines during the active phase. Only day-fed mice enhanced serum cytokine responses when LPS challenge occurred during the inactive phase (ZT0); this did not result in enhanced bactericidal capacity. These data suggest that mistimed feeding has functional relevance for immune function and provide further evidence for the integration of the circadian, metabolic, and immune systems.

Zika virus (ZIKV) is a mosquito-borne flavivirus that became widely recognized due to the epidemic in Brazil in 2015. Since then, there has been nearly a 20-fold increase in the incidence of microcephaly and birth defects seen among women giving birth in Brazil, leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to officially declare a causal link between prenatal ZIKV infection and the serious brain abnormalities seen in affected infants. Here, we used a unique rat model of prenatal ZIKV infection to study three possible long-term outcomes of congenital ZIKV infection: (1) behavior, (2) cell proliferation, survival, and differentiation in the brain, and (3) immune responses later in life. Adult offspring that were prenatally infected with ZIKV exhibited motor deficits in a sex-specific manner, and failed to mount a normal interferon response to a viral immune challenge later in life. Despite undetectable levels of ZIKV in the brain and serum in these offspring at P2, P24, or P60, these results suggest that prenatal exposure to ZIKV results in lasting consequences that could significantly impact the health of the offspring. To help individuals already exposed to ZIKV, as well as be prepared for future outbreaks, we need to understand the full spectrum of neurological and immunological consequences that could arise following prenatal ZIKV infection.

Since Zika virus (ZIKV) first emerged as a public health concern in 2015, our ability to identify and track the long-term neurological sequelae of prenatal Zika virus (ZIKV) infection in humans has been limited. Our lab has developed a rat model of maternal ZIKV infection with associated vertical transmission to the fetus that results in significant brain malformations in the neonatal offspring. Here, we use this model in conjunction with longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to expand our understanding of the long-term neurological consequences of prenatal ZIKV infection in order to identify characteristic neurodevelopmental changes and track them across time. We exploited both manual and automated atlas-based segmentation of MR images in order to identify long-term structural changes within the developing rat brain following inoculation. The paradigm involved scanning three cohorts of male and female rats that were prenatally inoculated with 107 PFU ZIKV, 107 UV-inactivated ZIKV (iZIKV), or diluent medium (mock), at 4 different postnatal day (P) age points: P2, P16, P24, and P60. Analysis of tracked brain structures revealed significantly altered development in both the ZIKV and iZIKV rats. Moreover, we demonstrate that prenatal ZIKV infection alters the growth of brain regions throughout the neonatal and juvenile ages. Our findings also suggest that maternal immune activation caused by inactive viral proteins may play a role in altered brain growth throughout development. For the very first time, we introduce manual and automated atlas-based segmentation of neonatal and juvenile rat brains longitudinally. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our novel approach for detecting significant changes in neurodevelopment in models of early-life infections.