Summary
We report the effects of four levels of maternal dietary taurine on the cerebellum of 45-day gestation fetuses. As we have previously reported for newborn and 8-week-old kittens, maternal dietary taurine content has a profound effect also on fetal cerebellum. Fetuses from queens fed the lowest amount of taurine had the greatest density of granule cells, probably because of smallest brain size, and had a high proportion of morphological abnormalities. Somewhat surprising was the observation that the fetuses from the lowest maternal dietary taurine group had the highest proportion of taurine-positive granule cells. In addition, these results confirm the vulnerability of developing fetal brain to its intrauterine environment.
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Sturman, J.A., Lu, P. Role of feline maternal taurine nutrition in fetal cerebellar development: An immunohistochemical study. Amino Acids 13, 369–377 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01372600
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01372600