Prenatal undernutrition disrupted the sexual maturation, but not the sexual behavior, in male rats

Purpose: Exposure to various stressors, including psychological, metabolic, and immune, in the perinatal period induces long‐lasting effects in physiological function and increase the risk of metabolic disorders in later life. In the present study, sexual maturation and sexual behavior were assessed in prenatally undernourished mature male rats.
Methods: All the pregnant rats were divided into the maternal normal nutrition (mNN) group and the maternal undernutrition (mUN) group. The mUN mothers received 50% of the amount of the daily food intake of the mNN mothers. Preputial separation and sexual behavior were observed in randomly selected pups of the mNN and mUN groups.
Results: The body weight of the mothers was significantly lighter in the mUN group than in the mNN group. Similarly, the pups in the mUN group showed a significantly lower body weight than those in the mNN group from postnatal day (PND) 1 to PND 15. The preputial separation day was significantly delayed in the mUN group, compared to the mNN group. Sexual behavior did not show any significant difference between the two groups.
Conclusion: These findings indicated that prenatal undernutrition delayed sexual maturation, but did not suppress sexual behavior, in mature male rats.

© 2017 The Authors. Reproductive Medicine and Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Japan Society for Reproductive Medicine. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.