Avaliação comportamental da rata gestante após o transporte nos primeiros dias de gestação e cria

Abstract

Pregnancy is considered a period of big variation to the maternal organism. Besides, the mother is due to stressing influences from the external environment that might intervene in health and mother-fetal wellbeing. Thus, mating in the experimental facility may avoid stress from handling and transporting pregnancy females, assuring full observation over pre and post gestational periods. However, to obtain pregnancy females can avoid loss of animals that cannot get pregnant and prevent acquiring males. This study aimed to determine if there are behavior changings caused by handling and transporting females obtained already pregnant by observing pre and postnatal periods: gestation, lactation, soundness of neonates and their development after weaning verifying alterations that could cause injury for litter growth. Animals were evaluated through neurobehavior tests and results were compared to those previously obtained in studies whose mating was performed in the experimental animal facility. In the handgrip reflex test, an increase in the experimental group of males and females was observed on the 4th day of observation and a decrease on the 8th day, in females. When comparing postural reflex, results didn’t show significant differences. In the results for negative geotaxia, no significant difference was observed among groups, as well as locomotion movement and general activity. Mother’s body weight during pregnancy didn’t present any significative difference for the experimental group related to control group. These results, put together, cannot allow stating significant influence in transporting females in the first stages of pregnancy in Wistar rats.