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Record W4416813486 · doi:10.1101/2025.11.27.691002

Prenatal maternal stress is associated with increased sensitivity to neuropathic pain and sex-specific epigenetic and transcriptomic dynamics in the prefrontal cortex

2025· preprint· W4416813486 on OpenAlexaff
Arthur Vovk, Stéphanie Grégoire, Zofia Barel, Laura S. Stone, Elad Lax

Bibliographic record

VenuebioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025
Typepreprint
Language
FieldMedicine
TopicPrenatal Substance Exposure Effects
Canadian institutionsMcGill University
FundersUniversity of Minnesota
KeywordsDNA methylationEpigeneticsPrefrontal cortexTranscriptomeNeuropathic painMethylationChronic pain

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract Prenatal maternal stress (PNS) is a common early-life adversity. PNS has been linked to greater vulnerability to chronic pain in the offspring. PNS results in increased hypersensitivity after Chronic Constriction Injury (CCI) of the sciatic nerve, a common rodent model for chronic neuropathic pain. These behavioral effects are accompanied by altered levels of enzymes that regulate DNA methylation in the frontal cortex. DNA methylation, the addition of a methyl group onto cytosine bases of cytosine-guanine (CpG) sites in the genome, is an epigenetic mechanism by which life experiences can reprogram gene expression. The goal of this study was to identify differentially methylated regions that might contribute to the increased pain sensitivity following nerve injury in adulthood. Prior studies indicate widespread, sex-specific transcriptomic changes and numerous differentially methylated regions (DMRs) in the frontal cortex following PNS and nerve injury. Here we performed genome wide DNA methylation and transcriptome-wide RNAseq analysis in the frontal cortex of male and female mice that underwent PNS, CCI or both. Our analysis revealed sex-dependent changes in DNA methylation and mRNA expression, including in pathways related to neuronal and brain development, axonogenesis and synaptic regulation. The effect of DNA methylation on mRNA expression was tested in a subset of target genes. These studies suggest a role for DNA methylation in embedding increased risk for chronic pain in adulthood associated with early-life adversity.

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 imitation

Not 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.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.002
Threshold uncertainty score0.004

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

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.

Opus teacher head0.007
GPT teacher head0.196
Teacher spread0.189 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

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".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venuebioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)→Same topicPrenatal Substance Exposure Effects→French-language works237,207→