Dysregulation of immune system markers, gut microbiota and short-chain fatty acid production following prenatal alcohol exposure: A developmental perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) can severely impact fetal development, including alterations to the developing immune system. Immune perturbations, in tandem with gut dysbiosis, have been linked to brain and behavioral dysfunction, but this relationship is poorly understood in the context of PAE. This study takes an ontogenetic approach to evaluate PAE-induced alterations to brain and serum cytokine levels and both the composition and metabolic output of the gut microbiota. Using a well-established rat model of PAE, cytokine levels in the serum, prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hypothalamus as well as gut microbiota composition and short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) levels were assessed at three postnatal (P) timepoints: P8 (infancy), P22 (weaning), and P38 (adolescence). Male PAE rats had increased cytokine levels in the amygdala and hypothalamus, but not prefrontal cortex, at P8. This altered neuroimmune function was not seen in the PAE females. The effect of PAE on central cytokine levels was reduced at P22/38, the same age at which PAE-induced alterations in serum cytokine levels emerge in both sexes. PAE reduced bacterial diversity in both sexes at P8, but only in females at P38, where a PAE-induced unique community composition emerged. Both sexes had alterations to specific bacterial taxa (e.g., Firmicutes), some of which are important in producing the SCFA butyric acid, which was decreased in PAE animals at P22. These results demonstrate that PAE leads to sex- and age-specific alterations in immune function, gut microbiota and SCFA production, highlighting the need to consider both age and sex in future work. • Prenatal alcohol exposure alters cytokine levels in a sex and age specific manner. • Prenatal alcohol exposed males have increased brain cytokines in early life. • Prenatal alcohol exposure increases serum cytokines in both sexes in adolescence. • Prenatal alcohol exposure alters gut microbiota and SCFAs at several timepoints.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".