Modulating effects of environmental enrichment on stress-induced changes in the gut microbiome
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Environmental enrichment (EE) involves adding non-standard stimuli, such as running wheels, mazes, and cage mates, to standard animal living conditions to facilitate physical activity, cognitive stimulation, and socialization. Interestingly, exposure to EE can modulate stress and immune responses. However, it is unclear whether housing environments can modulate the effects of stress on the gut microbiome. This study aimed to explore the effects of three different housing conditions—deprived (DH), social (SH), and enriched (EE)—on the central and peripheral immune responses, the HPA axis, and the gut microbiome in 180 male and female mice. Mice were housed in either the DH, SH, or EE condition for 3 weeks starting from post-natal day 21. At 6 weeks of age, during the pubertal stress-sensitive period, mice were treated with either saline or lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a bacterial endotoxin. Eight hours post-treatment, mice were euthanized, and brain, fecal samples, and trunk blood were collected to examine peripheral and central cytokine levels, glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) expressions, along with diversity in the gut microbiome. Contrary to expectations, EE and SH mice showed higher plasma concentrations of TNFα, IL6, and IL12 cytokines than DH mice following LPS treatment, with male mice exhibiting significantly higher levels of these cytokines than their female counterparts. Moreover, EE mice exhibited significantly greater hypothalamic and hippocampal expressions of GR and MR compared to DH mice. The gut microbiome analysis revealed sex-specific beta diversity patterns post-LPS treatment, with male EE and SH mice displaying a more diverse microbiome compared to female counterparts. These findings enhance our understanding of how housing conditions influence the acute immune and stress responses and modulate their effects on the gut microbiome during puberty. • Male mice show higher peripheral TNFα and IL6 after LPS treatment than females. • LPS-treated EE and SH mice show higher IFNγ, IL1β, and IL6 cytokines than DH mice • EE prevented LPS-induced GR and MR decreases in the PVN for males and females. • LPS treatment affects beta, but not alpha diversity in microbial profiles. • Increased Escherichia / Shigella in LPS-treated mice, except for EE females.
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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) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".