Neurobehavioral evaluation of mouse newborns exposed prenatally to low-dose bisphenol A

Abstract

There have been few neurobehavioral toxicology studies on newborn animals. Thus, we developed a mouse newborn behavioral testing method for evaluating the risk of neurotoxicity of environmental toxicants, by means of determining the newborn's motor activity applying the tare function of an analytical balance. Motor activities including crawling, pivoting, righting or tremors of mouse newborns were evaluated. Tremors of newborns of dams exposed to bisphenol A at 2, 20 or 200 µg/kg/day on days 5 through 18 of gestation were significantly increased when evaluated on postnatal day 1, as well as those of newborns exposed prenatally to diethylstilbestrol at 0.5 µg/kg/day. We suggest that our developed testing method may provide a useful addition to neurobehavioral assessment in very young rodents exposed to environmental hormone mimics.