Search results for " Offspring"
showing 10 items of 21 documents
Does the longevity of one or both parents influence the health status of their offspring?
2013
According to the findings of some recent studies, the centenarians' offspring appear to represent a promising model for research on longevity and healthy aging. This study compares the health status and the functional status of three groups of subjects: 1. individuals with two long-lived parents (one of whom centenarian), 2. individuals with only one long-lived (centenarian) parent, and 3. individuals with no long-lived parents. The goal is to verify whether the centenarians' offspring display any advantage over the offspring of both non-long-lived parents and to evaluate whether the longevity of the non centenarian parent provides a further advantage. A total of 374 subjects (mean age appr…
Prenatal and neonatal risk factors for the development of enamel defects in low birth weight children
2009
Oral Diseases (2010) 16, 257–262 Objective: To analyse the influence of several prenatal and neonatal risk factors in the development of enamel defects in low birth weight children. Subjects and methods: Children between 4 and 5 years of age (n = 102) were classified into: Group 1) 52 low birth weight (<2500 g); Group 2) 50 normal birth weight (≥2500 g). Medical history, prenatal and neonatal variables were collected. Enamel defects were evaluated with the modified Developmental Defects of Enamel Index. Results: The prevalence of hypoplasia and average number of affected teeth were significantly higher in group 1 than in group 2 (59.6%vs 16% and 1.6 vs 0.3 respectively). Low gestational …
Prader–Willi Syndrome with Angelman Syndrome in the Offspring
2021
We report the second case, to the best of our knowledge, of a mother with Prader–Willi syndrome (PWS) who gave birth to a daughter with Angelman syndrome (AS). The menarche occurred when she was 16, and the following menstrual cycles were irregular, but she never took sexual hormone replacement therapy. At the age of 26, our patient with PWS became pregnant. The diagnosis was confirmed by molecular genetic testing that revealed a ~5.7 Mb deletion in the 15q11.1–15q13 region on the paternal allele in the mother with PWS and the maternal one in the daughter with AS, respectively. Both the mother with PWS and the daughter with AS showed peculiar clinical and genetic features of the two syndrom…
Drinking pattern matters: effects on maternal care and offspring vulnerability to alcohol in rats
2015
Alcohol drinking during pregnancy and post-partum period is a major concern because of the persistent neurobehavioral deficits in the offspring, which include increased vulnerability to substance abuse (1). The intermittent pattern of alcohol consumption induces higher drinking levels and deeper neurobiological changes in addiction-related brain regions, with respect to traditional free-access paradigms in male rats (2, 3). Nevertheless, no studies investigated on the effects of the drinking pattern on female subjects during pregnancy and perinatal time. To this aim, this study explored the consequences of continuous vs. intermittent drinking pattern on maternal behaviour and on offspring v…
The role of immune response in ageing and longevity. A focus on B cell compartment
2017
The improvement of the quality of life of elderly people is going to become a priority because of the continuous increase in the number of centenarians. This render the studies of the processes involved in ageing of critical importance. Centenarians are a widely accepted model of successful ageing, a complex process which is influenced by several biological, environmental and lifestyle factors, because they have reached the extreme limits of life span overcoming the major age-related diseases. In centenarians model, several aspects have been studied, as inflammation, immune system, genetics and metabolism, to understand the secret of their long survival. It has been proposed that centenaria…
B CELL CHANGES IN AGING
2014
The aging of the immune system is a gradual and dynamic process that modifies some immunological functions. These changes are known as “immunosenescence” that have a great impact on immune performance in late life, contributing to the decreased ability of the elderly people to respond to emerging pathogens and to the decreased responsiveness to vaccinations. It is known that the adaptive immune functions are affected in the aged. In particular, with aging, the acquired compartment of the immune system shows significant modifications in both T and B cell branches. Thus, the adaptive immune response of elderly people is qualitatively and quantitatively reduced when compared to that observed i…
Unconditional adoption rules out the need for parent–offspring recognition in a single‐brooded colonial seabird
2021
Parent–offspring recognition (POR) is fundamental in colonial birds when the potential intermingling of chicks is higher due to the large number and proximity of nests. In species with isolated nests, where chick presence in the nest is strong contextual evidence of kinship, there might be circumstances when the parent might doubt the identity of the chick, but not enough to reject it. Olfactory-based recognition of conspecifics and nest sites in birds has gained strong evidence suggesting a potential role of olfaction in POR. Despite that, there are no studies testing it. We used Scopoli's shearwater (Calonectris diomedea) as model colonial single-brooded species with a developed olfactory…
Relationship between egg features and maternal body size in the simultaneous hermaphrodite Oxynoe olivacea (Mollusca, Opisthobranchia, Sacoglossa)
2005
This paper provides information on spawn morphology and egg features of the stenophagous planktotrophic Mediterranean sacoglossan Oxynoe olivacea. Smith and Fretwell’s hypothesis, predicting that individuals of the same population growing in the same environmental conditions and varying in size should spawn eggs of a constant size, was tested in a population of O. olivacea living in the Straits of Messina. To determine whether (a) spawn mass size, (b) total egg number per spawn, and (c) egg size were related to parent size of O. olivacea, 21 egg masses (seven egg masses deposited by seven different 20 mm animals, seven egg masses deposited by seven different 25 mm animals and seven egg mass…
Prenatal Exposure to Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol Affects Hippocampus-Related Cognitive Functions in the Adolescent Rat Offspring: Focus on Specific Marke…
2023
Previous evidence suggests that prenatal exposure to THC (pTHC) derails the neurodevelopmental trajectories towards a vulnerable phenotype for impaired emotional regulation and limbic memory. Here we aimed to investigate pTHC effect on hippocampus-related cognitive functions and markers of neuroplasticity in adolescent male offspring. Wistar rats were exposed to THC (2 mg/kg) from gestational day 5 to 20 and tested for spatial memory, object recognition memory and reversal learning in the reinforce-motivated Can test and in the aversion-driven Barnes maze test; locomotor activity and exploration, anxiety-like behaviour, and response to natural reward were assessed in the open field, elevate…
Microchimerism in multiple sclerosis: The association between sex of offspring and MRI features in women with multiple sclerosis
2023
AimsDuring pregnancy, fetal cells can migrate to the mother via blood circulation. A percentage of these cells survive in maternal tissues for decades generating a population of fetal microchimeric cells (fMCs), whose biological role is unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between the sex of offspring, an indirect marker of fMCs, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) features in women with multiple sclerosis (MS).MethodsWe recruited 26 nulliparous MS patients (NPp), 20 patients with at least one male son (XYp), and 8 patients with only daughters (XXp). Each patient underwent brain MR scan to acquire 3D-T2w FLAIR FatSat and 3D-T1w FSPGR/TFE. Lesion Segmentation To…