FETAL ALCOHOL AND THYMOCYTE PHENOTYPES IN OFFSPRING - RESPONSE TO FOOD-DEPRIVATION

Restriction of food availability is a reliable stimulus that leads to significant hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) activation to which ra ts do not habituate. Based on our previous data that indicated that th e HPA response to some, but not all, stressful stimuli is significantl y greater in adult offspring of Sprague-Dawley darns exposed to 35% al cohol during the last 2 weeks of gestation than that of control rats a nd on the mounting neuroendocrine-immune literature that describes the role of pituitary-adrenal products in modulating cellular immunity, w e hypothesized that the outcomes of food restriction would be signific antly more marked in fetal alcohol-exposed (FAE) offspring, compared w ith control rats. Data we report herein show that-whereas food restric tion at 30-35 days of age produced significant changes in body weight, thymus weight-to-body weight ratio, adrenal weight-to-body weight rat io, plasma corticosterone revels, and in thymocyte number, as well as in the percentage and absolute number of CD4(+) and CD8(+) thymocytes that express CD45RC-FAE and control rats were equally affected. We con clude that food restriction is another example of a stressful stimulus that fails to distinguish satisfactorily between FAE and control rats of prepubertal age.