Malnutrition has been associated with a variety of functional and anatomical impairments of the hippocampal formation. One of the more striking of these is widespread loss of hippocampal neurons in postnatally malnourished rats. In the present study we have investigated the effect of prenatal malnutrition on these same neuronal populations, neurons that are all generated during the period of the dietary restriction. In prenatally protein deprived rats, using design-based stereology, we have measured the regional volume and number of neurons in the hilus of the dentate gyrus and the pyramidal cell layers of CA3, CA2, CA1, and the subiculum of 90-day-old animals. These results demonstrated a statistically significant reduction of 20% in neuron numbers in the CA1 subfield, while numbers in the other subfields were unchanged. There was a corresponding significant reduction of 22% in the volume of the CA1 subfield and a significant 14% decrease in the volume of the pyramidal layer of the subiculum. The change in volume of the pyramidal layer of the subiculum without neuron loss may reflect loss of CA1 afferent input to the pyramidal layer. Although the effect of nutritional deprivation on the neuronal population appears to be different in pre- and postnatal malnutrition, both dietary paradigms highlight the vulnerability of key components of the hippocampal trisynaptic circuit (consisting of the dentate granule cell mossy fibers projection to CA3 pyramids and the CA3 projection to the CA1 pyramids), which is an essential circuit for memory and learning.
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