title: Anxiety-like behaviors in pre-pubertal rats of the Flinders Sensitive Line (FSL) and Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) animal models of depression.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Braw
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Malkesman
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dagan
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bercovich
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lavi-Avnon
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schroeder
authors.forename: D H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Overstreet
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Weller
mesh_terms: D017677:Age Distribution; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001007:Anxiety / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003863:Depression / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D011921:Rats, Inbred WKY; D012741:Sexual Maturation / Q000502:physiology*; D012931:Social Environment; D013045:Species Specificity; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000150:complications*