Neonatal maternal separation decreases mean arterial blood pressure in adult female rats
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction The prevalence of depression is higher in adult women than in men. Interestingly, a decrease in arterial blood pressure is commonly observed in patients affected by this mood disorder. This association raises the possibility that low blood pressure could distinguish a subgroup of the population that are at higher risk to develop this psychiatric disorder. In rats, exposure to neonatal maternal separation (NMS) leads to depressive‐like behaviors in adult animals, thus offering a simple translational model for pre‐clinic studies. In addition, a variety of studies showed that during the premenstrual period a high number of women at reproductive‐age present symptoms of irritability, emotional hypersensitivity, increased anxiety as well as depression. The impact of hormonal fluctuations on psychiatric disorders is well established, yet there are only a few studies regarding blood pressure control during different phases of the menstrual cycle. While the link between stress (including NMS) and hypertension has been well documented in males, the effects of hormonal fluctuations in pre‐clinical studies in female animals have not been explored. Based on that, we developed two main hypotheses: 1) by comparison with undisturbed (control) rats, NMS decreases arterial blood pressure in adult females. 2) NMS will increase the impact of the estrous cycle on blood pressure. Methodology Rat pups were either undisturbed (control) or subjected to NMS during which pups were placed in individual spaces into a temperature‐controlled incubator 3h/day from postnatal day 3 to 12. Once they reached adulthood, (8 weeks of age) cardiovascular parameters were measured in females using the tail cuff method. To cover all phases of the estrous cycle, we did our measurements once a week during 7 weeks, (between 8‐14 weeks of animal's life), during the morning (9‐12h) period. The data were analyzed using the two‐way ANOVA test, comparing the treatment (CTRL vs NMS) and the phases of the estrous cycle. Results We showed that the diastolic and systolic pressures of NMS females were 5% less than controls (diastolic: CTRL: 84 mmHg, NMS: 79 mmHg, p=0.0015, systolic: CTRL: 121 mmHg, NMS: 116 mmHg, p=0.02). This resulted in a significant drop in mean arterial pressure (CTRL: 96 mmHg, NMS: 91 mmHg, p=0.02). The heart rate was similar between the groups. Surprisingly, we observed no effects of the estrous cycle on the blood pressure neither in NMS nor in control animals. Discussion This demonstrates that the NMS decreases the blood pressure of our female animals in adult life as observed in humans with anxiety and depressive behaviors. This observation further validates our model and justifies new studies exploring the mechanisms by which early life stress leads to physiological and psychiatric changes in adulthood. Ultimately, this research can help us develop more precise therapies for specific groups. For instance, Licht et al 2009 demonstrated that the use of antidepressant from patients that exhibited decreased blood pressure increases their risk to present hypertension.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".