Early-Life Stress as a Probe to Study the Opioid System in Developing Rodents.

The developmental origins of disease or fetal programming model predict that early (intrauterine and/or postnatal) exposures to external insults of sufficient length and intensity may have enduring or lifelong consequences for physical and psychological health. The method described in this chapter considers an animal model to study the pathophysiological alterations connected to an HPA axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) hyperactivity that are induced by an early-life stressful procedure involving the opioid system.