{"id":54760,"date":"2016-02-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-02-02T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/newsroom\/2016\/02\/02\/dr-dunaevskys-brain-work\/"},"modified":"2022-09-02T16:55:45","modified_gmt":"2022-09-02T21:55:45","slug":"dr-dunaevskys-brain-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/newsroom\/2016\/02\/02\/dr-dunaevskys-brain-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Dunaevsky&#8217;s brain work"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\"><p>\nFor Anna Dunaevsky, Ph.D., it&#8217;s all about the brain.<\/p>\n<p>\nDr. Dunaevsky, an associate professor of developmental neuroscience, has always been fascinated by the brain &#8211; specifically &#8220;how this complex structure is developed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\nFrom there, it was a short step to connect behavioral changes with structural development and actual cellular events. That step became inevitable when she joined the Munroe-Meyer Institute, where she took an interest in questions related to neurodevelopmental disorders.<\/p>\n<p>\nOne of those questions &#8211; the effects of maternal inflammation on developmental disabilities, specifically autism &#8211; led to Dr. Dunaevsky&#8217;s four-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health for a project titled &#8220;Maternal Immune Activation in a Genetic Mouse Model of Autism Spectrum Disorder.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\nThe project explores maternal infections during pregnancies as a risk factor that increases the chance of offspring developing autism.<\/p>\n<p>\n<strong>Dr. Dunaevsky is building on three lines of evidence:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Research has shown that infection during the first or second trimester, either viral or bacterial, is a risk factor for autism.<\/li>\n<li>There is evidence that autistic patients show increased levels of such inflammatory molecules as cytokines.<\/li>\n<li>Animal studies have shown that when inflammation is induced in a pregnant mother, offspring display various behavioral alterations that are relevant to autism &#8211; reduced ultrasonic vocalization, which is a form of communication, increased repetitive behavior, and reduced social interaction &#8211; that suggest changes in the brain.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n&#8220;All of that has led us to suggest that maternal immune activation, which is what we call this model, leads to alterations in development of synapses, the connections between neurons.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\nDr. Dunaevsky continues work that was initially funded by the Nebraska Research Initiative and the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n<p>\n&#8220;We found that impairments in synapses &#8211; in terms of numbers and function &#8211; correlate with the behavioral deficits that we see,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>\nImportantly, Dr. Dunaevsky and her team found that, where there is an increased inflammatory state in the brain of the mouse offspring, a two-week anti-inflammatory treatment led to reversal of the synaptic impairments and some of the behavioral impairments in young mice.<\/p>\n<p>\n&#8220;In adult mice, that early, short-term treatment had some beneficial effect, but it didn&#8217;t\u00a0 completely reverse the impairments,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>\n&#8220;There are many mothers who get sick during pregnancy and their children do not develop autism,&#8221; Dr. Dunaevsky said. &#8220;And of course, there is plenty of genetic evidence for involvement of neuronal genes in autism, so just immune activation is not the entire story. It&#8217;s therefore likely that interactions with genetic risk factors are involved.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\nThat is the focus of the new project &#8211; to explore the genetic risk factors in combination with environmental risk factors.<\/p>\n<p>\n&#8220;That component of the anti-inflammatory treatment was surprising to us, how effective it was in mice,&#8221; she said. &#8220;So with this new grant, we&#8217;re going to use this approach as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Research explores possible autism link to infections during pregnancies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":54761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","department-discover","author_override-john-keenan-unmc-public-relations"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Dr. Dunaevsky&#039;s brain 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