Affiliation:
1. Chongqing Medical University
2. Army Medical University
3. Affiliated Hospital of North Sichuan Medical College
4. Chongqing University Fuling Hospital
5. China National Clinical Research Center for Neurological Diseases, Capital Medical University
Abstract
Abstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by atypical patterns of social interaction and communication as well as restrictive and repetitive behaviors. Additionally, ASD often presents with sleep disturbances. Delta (δ) catenin protein 2 (CTNND2) encodes δ-catenin protein, a neuron-specific catenin implicated in many complex neuropsychiatric diseases. Our previous study had exhibited deletion of Ctnnd2 in mice lead to autism-like behaviors. However, to our knowledge, no studies have investigated the effects of Ctnnd2 deletion in sleep of mice. In this study, we investigated whether knockout (KO) of exon 2 of the Ctnnd2 gene could induce sleep-wake disorders in mice and identify the effects of oral melatonin (MT) supplementation on KO mice. Our results demonstrated that KO mice exhibited ASD-like behaviors and sleep-wake disorders and they were attenuated, in part, by MT supplementation. Moreover, we further proved the correlation between autism-like behaviors and sleep-wake disorders in KO mice. MT may improve ASD-like behaviors by attenuating sleep-wake dysfunction. Overall, our current study was the first to identify that knockdown of Ctnnd2 gene could induce sleep-wake disorders in mice and had a correlation between sleep and phenotypes of ASD in Ctnnd2 KO mice. Our findings suggest that treatment of sleep-wake disturbances benefits on Ctnnd2 gene-deletion caused autism-like behaviors.
Publisher
Research Square Platform LLC