Biomaterial Database

Anxiety-like Behavior in Female Sprague Dawley Rats Associated with Cecal Clostridiales. 2023

Tracey Bear, and Nicole Roy, and Julie Dalziel, and Chrissie Butts, and Jane Coad, and Wayne Young, and Shanthi G Parkar, and Duncan Hedderley, and Hannah Dinnan, and Sheridan Martell, and Susanne Middlemiss-Kraak, and Pramod Gopal

The New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Limited, Palmerston North 4410, New Zealand.

The relationship between the microbiota profile and exposure to stress is not well understood. Therefore, we used a rat model of unpredictable chronic mild stress (UCMS) to investigate this relationship. Depressive-like behaviors were measured in Female Sprague Dawley rats using the sucrose preference test and the Porsolt swim test. Anxiety-like behaviors were measured with the light-dark box test. Fecal corticosterone, cecal microbiota (composition and organic acids), plasma gut permeability (lipopolysaccharide-binding protein, LBP) and plasma inflammation (12 cytokines) markers were measured. Atypical behaviors were observed in female rats following UCMS, but no depressive-like behaviors were observed. Circulating concentrations of cytokines granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor and cytokine-induced neutrophil chemoattractant 1 were higher in UCMS-exposed female rats; plasma LBP and cecal organic acid levels remained unchanged. Our results reflect a resilient and adaptive phenotype for female SD rats. The relative abundance of taxa from the Clostridiales order and Desulfovibrionaceae family did, however, correlate both positively and negatively with anxiety-like behaviors and plasma cytokine concentrations, regardless of UCMS exposure, supporting the brain-to-gut influence of mild anxiety with a microbiota profile that may involve inflammatory pathways.