63 Dietary Iron Deficiency Early in Rat Life and Medium Term Changes in Learning and Motor Skills.

Abstract

Iron deficiency has been invoked as an etiologic factor of behavioural disorders and learning disabilities in children like ADHD. However no animal model has been develop to check out such a effect.

Aim: To submit Wistar rats to an iron deficient diet from the newborn period to the post natal day 30 (P30) and check out attention tasks, passive avoidance, and open field versus a normally fed group.

Subjects and methods: Thirty newborn Wistar rats from three litters of teen pups each, had their dams fed with an Iron deficient diet during lactation (ID group). They were weaned in P21, remaining in the ID diet until P30. In P27 were submitted to three -T- maze test training trials. In P30 a fourth -T- maze test trial and an open field test were performed. The percentage of the correct -T- maze solving (TMS), and the number of squares crossed (SC), and active time (AT) were registered by video tape reviewing. A Control group was set-up in the same conditions except for the diet.

Results: The ID group and the Control group did nor differ in the TMS percentages. In the OF test the ID showed significantly lower active time (Median=5; Range: Min=1-Maxr=32) than the Control group (Median=9.5; Range: Min=4-Max=33) (U=183.5; p=0.000); the number of SC were significantly lower in the ID group (Median=4; Range: Min=1-Max=34)than the Control group(Median=9.5; Rank: Min=4-Max=33) (U=187.5; p=0.000).

Conclusions: 1) Iron deficient diet does not cause differences in learning skills in the -T- maze test. 2) Spontaneous motor activity seems to be lower among those which were submitted to the iron deficient diet in the OF performance.

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