Abstract

Binge drinking during adolescence interferes with the development of the Central Nervous System, which is integral to neuroimmune function. Recent work with adult male rats exposed to alcohol in adolescence showed an impaired fever when challenged with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a bacterial infection model. The present studies sought to replicate and extend this effect across sexes and pathogen models. In Experiment 1, adult male and female Sprague-Dawley rats without a history of alcohol were implanted with telemetry probes and fever was monitored following Poly I:C (a viral mimetic, 4.0 mg/kg), LPS (50 µg/kg) or vehicle (saline; all delivered via intraperitoneal injection). For Experiments 2 (male) and 3 (female), adolescent rats received ethanol (4.0 g/kg) or water once daily for 3 consecutive days followed by 2 days undisturbed. This cycle of Adolescent Intermittent Ethanol (AIE) was repeated 4 times between post-natal (P) days 30-50. In adulthood (P70-80), fever was measured in response to Poly I:C, LPS or vehicle (same procedure as Experiment 1). Experiment 1 revealed that males showed a larger fever response than females following both challenges. Experiment 2 did not reveal an effect of AIE on fever among males; however, Experiment 3 showed a longer latency to peak fever among AIE-exposed females challenged with LPS. These findings support work demonstrating sex differences in fever and suggest that AIE may impair fever after bacterial infection in females. Studies are underway to probe the mechanisms behind this effect and examine whether AIE sex-dependently alters the fever response to repeated pathogen challenge.