Neuronendocrine Alteration before and after Traumatic Stress in an Animal Model

• Main Authors: Jyun-Hong Lin, 林俊宏
• Other Authors: Hsin-Chieh Lan
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/366x7g

碩士 === 國防醫學院 === 生物及解剖學研究所 === 102 === Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a complex syndrome that is defined by individual exposed to intense, life-threatening trauma leading to various physical and psychological abnormalities. The re-experiencing and avoidance symptoms of the disorder may hinder daily life in PTSD patients. They further develop additional debilitating symptoms, including persistent anxiety, exaggerated startle, cognitive impairments and diminished extinction of conditioned fear, and abnormally low cortisol levels. It is hard to study PTSD in human because the causes of PTSD are diverse and complicated and the symptoms are various in different periods after stress. Different life experience of individual is also an important factor in this disease. Therefore, we would like to use the animal model to approach the stress effects on endocrine systems. We used eight-week-old SD rats to impose survival pressure of space urgency. Then collect blood samples from tail vein for hormone analysis (corticosterone and estrogen) before and after the stimulations. We also used the behavioral tests (open field test and tail suspension test) to determine whether the animal have the PTSD-like symptoms . Three months later, we sacrificed all rats and collect the tissue samples (brain, testis, ovary and adrenal) for further study in the future. In our results, 10% of total rats were affected with survival pressure based on the behavioral tests and grouped as PTSD-like. These rats showed significant anxiety and depression after stress. In PTSD-like rats, estradiol levels are higher than control and stressed without symptom rats after stress. In corticosterone, PTSD-like rats show lower than control and stressed without symptom rats. We also observed that the estradiol level have some correlation with the results of behavioral tests in male rats. It indicates anxiety and depression induced by survival stress may be correlated with hormone secretions.