Behavioural characterisation of chronic unpredictable stress based on ethologically relevant paradigms in rats.

ABSTRACT: The chronic unpredictable stress (CUS) paradigm is extensively used in preclinical research. However, CUS exhibits translational inconsistencies, some of them resulting from the use of adult rodents, despite the evidence that vulnerability for many psychiatric disorders accumulates during early life. Here, we assessed the validity of the CUS model by including ethologically-relevant paradigms in juvenile rats. Thus, socially-isolated (SI) rats were submitted to CUS and compared with SI (experiment 1) and group-housed controls (experiment 1 and 2). We found that lower body-weight gain and hyperlocomotion, instead of sucrose consumption and preference, were the best parameters to monitor the progression of CUS, which also affected gene expression and neurotransmitter contents associated with

SUBMITTER: Sequeira-Cordero A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6874551 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature