Stress reactivity of the brain noradrenergic system in three rat strains differing in their neuroendocrine and behavioral responses to stress: implications for susceptibility to stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders
Section snippets
Animals
Adult male WKY, Lew or SD rats were obtained from Charles River (Raleigh, NC, USA). For most experiments, rats weighing 200–250 g upon arrival were allowed to acclimate to the animal facility for 7–10 days prior to use. The housing facility was maintained on a 12-h light cycle (lights on at 07.00 h). Experiments took place between 09.00 and 14.00 h. Animals initially were housed three per cage, all from the same strain, with ad libitum access to food and water. Four days prior to the beginning
Stress-induced ACTH secretion
Significant main effects of strain (F(2,100)=26.34, P<0.0001), time (F(3,100)=107.33, P<0.0001) and a strain×time interaction (F(6,100)=8.31, P<0.0001) were observed on the neuroendocrine response to stress. In unstressed baseline samples, plasma ACTH in trunk blood was comparably low in all three strains. Acute immobilization stress induced a significant increase in plasma ACTH in all strains (P<0.01), which returned toward baseline levels over the course of the post-stress recovery period (
Discussion
In this study, we characterized brain noradrenergic reactivity to acute immobilization stress in three rat strains that differ in the degree of activation of the HPA axis in response to stress. We first verified the blunted HPA response to stress in Lew rats (Gomez et al., 1998, Sternberg et al., 1989) and the exaggerated response of WKY rats (Pare and Redei, 1993, Redei et al., 1994). Similar hyper-reactivity of the peripheral physiological response to stress in WKY rats has also been
Acknowledgements
Supported by research grants from NIMH (MH53851 to D.A.M.) and the Veterans Administration/Department of Defense. We thank Dr. Martin Javors, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, for HPLC analyses of microdialysate samples.
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