Maternal Citicoline-Supplemented Diet Improves the Response of the Immature Hippocampus to Perinatal Asphyxia in Rats

Background: Citicoline represents a dietary source of choline, an essential nutrient, and precursor of cell membrane components, highly required during development and post-injury recovery.

Objectives: We previously showed that perinatal asphyxia (PA) induces hippocampal neuroinflammation and injury that are subject to epigenetic change by maternal diet. The present study investigates maternal citicoline-supplemented diet (CSD) impact on offspring hippocampal response to PA.

Methods: Six-day-old Wistar rats from mothers with standard-diet or CSD were exposed to PA. The hippocampal inflammation and injury were assessed by interleukin-1 beta (IL-1b), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFα), and S-100B protein (S-100B), 24-48 h post-asphyxia. The microRNAs species miR124, miR132, miR134, miR146, and miR15a were measured from the hippocampus 24 h post-asphyxia, to investigate its epigenetic response to PA and maternal diet. At maturity, the offspring's behavior was analyzed using open field (OFT), T-maze (TMT), and forced swimming (FST) tests.

Results: Our data show that the maternal CSD decreased IL-1b (p = 0.02), TNFα (p = 0.007), and S100B (p = 0.01) at 24 h postexposure, upregulated miR124 (p = 0.03), downregulated miR132 (p = 0.002) and miR134 (p = 0.001), shortened the immobility period in FST (p = 0.01), and increased the percentage of passed trials in TMT (p = 0.01) compared to standard-diet.

Conclusions: Maternal CSD reduces hippocampal inflammation and S100B level, triggers epigenetic changes related to homeostatic synaptic plasticity, memory formation, and neuronal tolerance to asphyxia, decreases the depressive-like behavior, and improves the lucrative memory in offspring subjected to PA. Thus, citicoline could be valuable as a maternal dietary strategy in improving the brain response to PA.