Abstract：
There has been an increasing use of cannabis during pregnancy in recent years. Studies have indicated that THC exposure in utero may increase the risk of attention deficits and memory impairments in adolescence. The goal of the present study is to investigate the effects of vaporized THC exposure during pregnancy on offspring memory and attention performance in early and late adolescence. Pregnant dams were exposed to vaporized THC (10 mg or 40 mg) daily from gestational day 2 until labor. Pups were given either a standard or a high-fat diet at weaning and tested in early and late adolescence in two memory tests, the Novel Object Recognition (NOR) test and the Morris Water Maze (MWM) test, and a test of attention, the Object-Based Attention (OBA) test. Rats exposed to low-dose THC showed significantly decreased object exploration in both the NOR and OBA tests, indicating decreased attention. Object exploration time in OBA was significantly lower in females than males. Additionally, post hoc analysis of MWM tests showed some differences in learning patterns for HD THC offspring in early adolescence, possibly due to diet interaction, but ultimate performance was not impacted. While there are existing studies examining prenatal exposure to THC in rodents, this is the first to our knowledge examining memory and attention in adolescence following vaporized THC exposure in utero, and we find indications that prenatal THC exposure may lead to attention deficits and altered memory performance.
摘要：
近年来，怀孕期间大麻的使用越来越多。研究表明，子宫内THC暴露可能会增加青春期注意力缺陷和记忆障碍的风险。本研究的目的是研究怀孕期间蒸发的THC暴露对青春期早期和晚期后代记忆和注意力表现的影响。从妊娠第2天到分娩，孕妇每天暴露于汽化的THC（10mg或40mg）。幼崽在断奶时给予标准或高脂肪饮食，并在青春期早期和晚期进行两次记忆测试，新型物体识别（NOR）测试和莫里斯水迷宫（MWM）测试，和注意力的测试，基于对象的注意力(OBA)测试。在NOR和OBA测试中，暴露于低剂量THC的大鼠显示出明显减少的物体探索，表明注意力下降。OBA中的对象探索时间女性明显低于男性。此外,对MWM测试的事后分析显示，青春期早期HDTHC后代的学习模式存在一些差异，可能是由于饮食的相互作用，但最终性能没有受到影响。虽然现有的研究检查了啮齿动物产前暴露于THC，这是我们第一次了解在子宫内蒸发的THC暴露后青春期的记忆和注意力，我们发现有迹象表明产前THC暴露可能导致注意力缺陷和记忆表现改变。
