Figure 3.

The effects of postnatal 10 mg/kg of MPTP on striatal DA, DOPAC, HVA and 3-MT in C57Bl/6J mice offspring that were exposed in utero to PBS or MPTP. The 1^st pair of columns for each represents offspring exposed to prenatal PBS and received postnatal PBS (blocked columns) or 10 mg/kg MPTP (diagonally striped columns). The 2^nd pair of columns represents offspring exposed to prenatal MPTP and received postnatal PBS (diagonally hatched columns) or 10 mg/kg MPTP (dotted columns). Note that the postnatal MPTP showed no significant effect in the prenatal PBS offspring (the 2^nd vs the 1^st columns), but the same dose of MPTP significantly reduced DA, DOPAC, HVA and 3-MT in the offspring that were exposed to prenatal MPTP (the 4^th vs the 2^nd columns). This highlights the susceptibility caused by the prenatal MPTP exposure. The slopes of the lines that connect column 2 and 4 dramatize the differences. Data were analyzed by using student-t test with P≤ 0.05. Asterisks (*) indicate significant differences between the prenatal PBS-postnatal MPTP mice (2^nd column) vs prenatal MPTP-postnatal MPTP mice (4^th column). The pound (#) sign shows that significant changes for DA, DOPAC and HVA occur when prenatal MPTP offspring were challenged with postnatal MPTP (4^th column), as compared to prenatal MPTP that were exposed to postnatal PBS (3^rd column). Only 3-MT was significantly reduced (@) by treating the prenatal PBS offspring with the 10 mg/kg of postnatal MPTP. The values are expressed in ng/mg protein and as mean ± SEM for 6 animals. Data were analyzed by using Student-t test.