During intensive care after preterm births, babies can experience low oxygen in their tissue and cells-or hypoxia. Hypoxia is linked to poor brain health outcomes and life-long memory issues, but the mechanisms are unclear. Researchers led by Art Riddle and Stephen Back, from Oregon Health and Science University, discovered a contributing mechanism by creating a mouse model for mild hypoxia following premature birth.\u00a0Riddle\u00a0emphasizes that, “The field has historically focused on how hypoxia injures white matter in the brain and kills neurons. This is the first study to explore how mild hypoxia may alter brain development without direct brain injury in this neonatal period.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
As presented in their\u00a0JNeurosci\u00a0paper,\u00a0mild hypoxia shortly after birth hindered learning and memory into adulthood, and the researchers discovered, at least in part,\u00a0the mechanism for this effect:\u00a0altered\u00a0neuron-to-neuron\u00a0communication in the hippocampus.\u00a0Probing a molecular mechanism, the researchers found that hypoxia following premature birth affected a protein channel involved in neuron-to-neuron communication and memory that develops in the hippocampus during adolescence. They also\u00a0identified\u00a0a second protein that was involved in hypoxia’s effects on the channel’s functioning. When the researchers targeted\u00a0this\u00a0second protein in adult mice, they restored the\u00a0channel’s\u00a0function. Adds Riddle, “We also found that\u00a0this\u00a0protein was altered by mild hypoxia when we looked at surrounding brain areas, which suggests other brain regions may also be susceptible to hypoxia.” The researchers plan to assess how hypoxia affects these areas in future work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the authors, this work sheds light on how hypoxia in preterm babies influences neuron communication in memory-related brain regions to hinder learning and memory into adulthood. Speaking on clinical implications, says Riddle, “The subtle deficits from mild hypoxia that we studied here are commonly seen in clinical settings with preterm babies.” Because the molecule they\u00a0identified\u00a0is not\u00a0expressed in babies at the time that they experience hypoxia, the researchers also plan to explore earlier developmental molecular targets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Journal reference:<\/p>\n
Riddle, A., et al. (2026). Mild neonatal hypoxia targets synaptic maturation, disrupts adult hippocampal learning and memory and is associated with CK2-mediated loss of synaptic calcium-activated potassium channel KCNN2 activity.\u00a0Journal of Neuroscience. DOI:\u00a010.1523\/JNEUROSCI.1643-25.2026.\u00a0https:\/\/www.jneurosci.org\/content\/early\/2026\/03\/12\/JNEUROSCI.1643-25.2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During intensive care after preterm births, babies can experience low oxygen in their tissue and cells-or hypoxia. Hypoxia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,1362,137,84126,51857,58801,54294,17326,1368,4011,8164,23837,1543],"class_list":["post-559639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brain","tag-health","tag-hippocampus","tag-hypoxia","tag-intensive-care","tag-mouse-model","tag-neuron","tag-neurons","tag-neuroscience","tag-oxygen","tag-premature-birth","tag-protein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}