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Stress during childhood has been linked to later schizophrenia in some individuals, but the roles of genotype and gene expression in this association have been less understood. These researchers aimed to obtain preclinical evidence of the relationship between prepuberty stress and previously identified schizophrenia risk genes.
At postnatal days 25 through 27 (corresponding to human prepuberty), mice underwent acute stress paradigms that included forced swim, restraint stress, and foot shocks. In behavioral and gene-expression tests in the hippocampus given on postnatal day 60, stressed mice compared with nonstressed controls had higher anxiety on the elevated plus maze test and greater Disc1 expression and lower messenger RNA in Gsk3β and N…