Early-life stress is associated with an increased risk of gastrointestinal disorders including IBS. In mice exposed to early-life stress caused by maternal separation, the researchers found an increased number of pain behaviours and visceral hypersensivity compared with mice that did not experience early-life stress. These changes were associated with altered histone acetylation in regions of the spine critical to visceral pain processing. Treatment of mice exposed to early-life stress with a histone deacetylase inhibitor, suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid, reversed visceral hypersensitivity and stress-induced faecal output. The authors suggest that modulation of epigenetic machinery could form the basis of new anti-IBS drugs.
References
Moloney, R. D. et al. Early-life stress-induced visceral hypersensitivity and anxiety behavior is reversed by histone deacetylase inhibition. Neurogastroenterol. Motil. 10.1111/nmo.12675
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Visceral hypersensitivity linked to histone acetylation. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 12, 608 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrgastro.2015.177
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrgastro.2015.177