Anxiety-like Behaviors in Pre-pubertal Rats of the Flinders Sensitive Line (Fsl) and Wistar-kyoto (Wky) Animal Models of Depression.
From: Department of Psychology, Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel.
Behavioural brain research
- Publish Date: Feb 2006
- ISSN: 0166-4328
- Volume: 167
- Issue: 2
- Pages: 261-9
- Medium: Print
- Language: English
- Citation (JAMA): Braw Y, Malkesman O, Dagan M, et al. Anxiety-like Behaviors in Pre-pubertal Rats of the Flinders Sensitive Line (Fsl) and Wistar-kyoto (Wky) Animal Models of Depression.. Behav. Brain Res. Feb 2006;167:261-9
Abstract
Animal models have been used in understanding the neuro-biological basis of depression and predicting successful treatment strategies. The current study focused on two genetic models of depression, the Flinder’s Sensitive Line (FSL) and Wister-Kyoto (WKY). Our laboratory showed depressive symptomatology in pre-pubertal WKY and FSL rats, and the current study focused on the strains’ anxiety-like traits. Since human depression-anxiety comorbidity is very common at young ages, it is essential to establish whether FSL and WKY pre-pubertal rats also exhibit such comorbidity. In addition, the effect of different rearing environments was studied using a mild chronic-stress condition (limiting available bedding between post-natal days 2-9). Two well-validated tests of anxiety, the open-field and elevated plus-maze, were used on 40-day-old pups. FSL pups exhibited lower anxiety-like behavior when compared to controls, in traditional open-field and plus-maze measures. A different pattern was observed in the WKY strain, which exhibited heightened anxiety-like behaviours in the FSL strain and affecting WKY’s body-weight. Overall, the findings indicate differential expression of anxiety in pre-pubertal rats belonging to the ‘depressed’ strains, suggesting that these strains may be suitable for modelling different sub-groups of depression at young ages.
Mesh Headings (Keywords): Age Distribution, Analysis of Variance, Animals, Anxiety, Behavior, Animal, Chronic Disease, Depression, Disease Models, Animal, Exploratory Behavior, Rats, Rats, Inbred Strains, Rats, Inbred WKY, Sexual Maturation, Social Environment, Species Specificity, Stress, Psychological
Check for Full Text / PubMed Unique Identifier (PMID): 16271773
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