title: Sexually dimorphic behavioral responses to prenatal dioxin exposure.
abstract: Pregnant Sprague-Dawley rats received a single oral dose of 0, 20, 60, or 180 ng/kg 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin on day 8 of gestation. Each litter contributed a single male-female pair trained to press a lever to obtain food pellets under two operant behavior procedures. Initially, each lever press was reinforced. The fixed-ratio (FR) requirement was then increased every four sessions from the initial setting of 1 to values between 6 and 71. We then studied responses for 30 days under a multiple schedule combining FR 11 and another schedule requiring a pause of at least 10 sec between responses (DRL 10-sec). TCDD evoked a sexually dimorphic response pattern. Generally, TCDD-exposed males responded at lower rates than control males. In contrast, exposed females responded at higher rates than controls. Each response measure from the mult-FR DRL schedule yielded a male-female difference score. We used the differences in response rate to calculate benchmark doses based on the relative displacement from modeled zero-dose performance of the effective dose at 1% (ED(01)) and 10% (ED(10)), as determined by a second-order polynomial fit to the dose-effect function. For the male-female difference in FR rate of responding, the mean ED(10) was 2.77 ng/kg with a 95% lower bound of 1.81 ng/kg. The corresponding ED(01) was 0.27 ng/kg with a 95% lower bound of 0.18 ng/kg. For the male-female difference in DRL rate, the mean ED(10) was 2.97 ng/kg with a 95% lower bound of 2.02 ng/kg. The corresponding ED(01) was 0.30 ng/kg with a 95% lower bound of 0.20 ng/kg. These values fall close to, but below, current estimates of human body burdens of 13 ng/kg, based on TCDD toxic equivalents.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Medicine, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, NY 14642, USA.
authors.forename: Rieko
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hojo
authors.forename: Sander
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Stern
authors.forename: Grazyna
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zareba
authors.forename: Vincent P
authors.initials: VP
authors.lastname: Markowski
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cox
authors.forename: James T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Kost
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Weiss
mesh_terms: D000284:Administration, Oral; D000818:Animals; D001822:Body Burden; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D004147:Dioxins / Q000009:adverse effects*; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D004785:Environmental Pollutants / Q000009:adverse effects*; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D011247:Pregnancy; D011297:Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D012727:Sex Characteristics
chemical_list: D004147:Dioxins; D004785:Environmental Pollutants