JN / Agencies
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Maternal separation in the first weeks of life increases the likelihood of using psychoactive drugs in adolescence, reveals a study by the Institute of Research and Innovation in Health at the University of Porto.
In an interview with the Lusa agency, Ana Magalhães, researcher in the Addiction Biology group and coordinator of the study “Stress at an early age affects vulnerability to drugs in adolescence”, explained that, to the amazement of the researchers, it is not the depression of the parents that increases the vulnerability to drug use of a child in adolescence, but rather the early separation between mother and baby.
“To our amazement, we went to verify that the depression did not have the effect we were expecting, which was to increase the vulnerability [para o uso de drogas], but stress [em idade] that had effects in both depressed and non-depressed individuals. The study turns out to be funny, because the results were not what we were expecting, but the precocious stress has had effects, increasing vulnerability to drugs in adolescence“, describes the specialist.
The study was carried out by a team of researchers from the Institute of Research and Innovation in Health (i3S) of the University of Porto, who evaluated the impact of maternal separation in the first two weeks of the rat’s life.
“Our more general objective was to know what makes individuals more vulnerable to adolescent drug use and then we went back to see things. As depression is very related to drug taking problems, we tried to see genetic depression (depressive parents), if it affected vulnerability to drugs, and we increased one more risk “, which was the early stress caused by maternal separation, said the researcher Ana Magalhães.
To develop the study, two strains of rats with different vulnerabilities to depression were used and were separated from their mothers during the first two weeks of life. Then, the effects of early separation were compared in adolescent rats whose mothers were more prone to anxiety and depression, with adolescent rats born to mothers without this history of depression.
When the animals in the study reached adolescence, the research team assessed their emotional state and the reward effect of psychoactive drugs.
“The results showed that stress during early life changed the emotional state of adolescents, making depressive animals more anxious and non-depressive animals more exploratory, having revealed, for both strains (depressive and non-depressive), an increased risk for dependency “added Renata Alves, another of the study’s researchers.
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