Delayed behavioral and genomic responses to acute combined stress in zebrafish, potentially relevant to PTSD and other stress-related disorders: focus on neuroglia, neuroinflammation, apoptosis and epigenetic modulation.

Delayed behavioral and genomic responses to acute combined stress in zebrafish, potentially relevant to PTSD and other stress-related disorders: focus on neuroglia, neuroinflammation, apoptosis and epigenetic modulation. Behav Brain Res. 2020 Apr 25;:112644 Authors: Yang L, Wang J, Wang D, Hu G, Liu Z, Yan D, Serikuly N, Alpyshov E, Demin KA, Strekalova T, de Abreu MS, Song C, Kalueff A Abstract Stress is a common trigger of stress-related disorders, such as anxiety, phobias, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Various animal models successfully reproduce core behaviors of these clinical conditions. Here, we develop a novel zebrafish model of stress (potentially relevant to human stress-related disorders), based on delayed persistent behavioral, endocrine and genomic responses to an acute severe 'combined' stressor. One week after adult zebrafish were exposed to a complex combined 90-min stress, we assessed their behaviors in the novel tank and the light-dark box tests, as well as whole-body cortisol and brain gene expression, focusing on genomic biomarkers of microglia, astrocytes, neuroinflammation, apoptosis and epigenetic modulation. Overall, stressed fish displayed persistent anxiety-like behavior, elevated whole-body cortisol, as well as upregulated brain mRNA expression of the genes encoding the glucocorticoid receptor, neurotrophin BDNF and its receptors TrkB, P75, CD11b (a general microglial biomarker), COX...
Source: Behavioural Brain Research - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Behav Brain Res Source Type: research