Age at Maternal Separation and Gastric Erosion Susceptibility in the Rat*

Abstract

The development of susceptibility to immobilization-induced gastric erosions was studied in laboratory rats previously separated from their mothers at 15, 21 or 25 days of age. Early separation (day 15) produced animals whose maximum susceptibility occurred at a much younger age, generated a susceptibility curve over life that was the inverse of the curve for animals separated later and led to severe gastrointestinal hemorrhage as a common and distinguishing complication in younger rats. The pathogenesis of erosion formation in early separated rats may be unique in that, for that group only, the food deprivation component of the immobilization paradigm, when presented alone, also produced erosion of the glandular stomach, with hemorrhage.

How Socioeconomic Disadvantages Get Under the Skin and into the Brain to Influence Health Development Across the Lifespan

“…The longer individuals were exposed to low SES, the higher their allostatic load. In addition, cumulative disadvantage is a powerful predictor of many biological markers of mortality and morbidity (Ackerman et al 1975;Ader et al 1960;Cameron et al 2005;Chida et al 2007;Fenoglio et al 2006;Kruschinski et al 2008;Lyons et al 2009). …”

Pathological Features and Proposed Diagnostic Criteria of Porcine Periweaning Failure-to-Thrive Syndrome

“…There are few published data describing the lesions of anorexia or starvation in pigs. In mice and rats, food deprivation results in gastric erosion and ulceration; 1,13,15 however, lesions have developed in the fundus of mice 15 but in the nonsecretory regions of rats. 1,13 In pigs, gastric ulcers associated with feed disruption almost always have developed in the nonsecretory pars esophagea, 4 but the lesions observed in PFTS-CASE pigs were almost exclusively in the fundus.…”

The emerging synthesis of development and evolution: A new biology for psychoanalysis

“…There was a smaller, but still robust effect of early separation that substantially increased vulnerability during late adolescence and early adulthood, whereas the normally weaned age groups continued to show minimal (5-10%) levels of gastric ulceration. But in late adulthood (200 days), nearly 50% of the normally weaned controls had developed vulnerability to the stress of immobilization, whereas, surprisingly, the early weaned rats had developed resistance to the stress by this age, only 25% of them showing ulceration (Ackerman et al, 1975).…”

“…Previous work (Ader, Tatum, & Beels, 1960) had shown that this early, permanent separation experience raised the susceptibility of adult rats to gastric ulceration (during prolonged immobilization) to 30%, with controls showing only occasional ulcers. In following up this lead, Sigurd Ackerman, Herbert Weiner and I (Ackerman, Hofer, & Weiner, 1975) took a developmental approach. We separated the mothers from their litters at 15 days postnatal age (weaning in the wild is at 25 days and in most labs, 21 days), and later immobilized their offspring in small wire mesh cages at different ages, using separate Neuropsychoanalysis 7 experimental groups, ranging from as early as two days after separation to late middle age at 200 days; normally weaned rats were also subject to immobilization at the same time points.…”