Stress-induce reduction of hypoglossal motoneuron excitability in male rats: a novel mechanism in the pathophysiology of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a multifactorial respiratory disorder affecting nearly 1 billon of adults worldwide. Anomalies in respiratory control during sleep contribute to airway obstructions and recurrent desaturations; however, the origins of the problem are not well known. Stress disrupts brain function and increases the risk of OSA co-morbidities, including hypertension and obesity; recent in vivo experiments in urethane anesthetised rats indicate that stress augments the frequency of obstructive events with O 2 desaturations during “sleep-like” states. Because stress-related reduction in genioglossus function emerged as an important mechanism, we tested the hypothesis that acute stress reduces excitability of hypoglossal motoneurons using whole cell recording. Adult male rats (52 – 60 days old) were anesthetised (isoflurane, 3% in air) and hypoglossal motoneurons were retrogradely labeled by intralingual injection of 10µl of dextran tetramethylrhodamine in the genioglossus. On the day before the experiments, rats were either subjected to a 90 min session of immobilisation stress (n = 11) or handled briefly by the experimenter (n = 15). Rats were then anesthetised (isoflurane) before brains were harvested and sectioned (250 µM) for whole cell recording in current clamp. Stress did not affect Vm or membrane capacitance but augmented rheobase (49%; p = 0.04) and action potential threshold (15%, p = 0.003). Stress also reduced the firing frequency response to step current injections (p < 0.001). We conclude that, independently of other comorbidities such as obesity, acute stress alone reduces hypoglossal motoneuron excitability. These data indicate that stress is an important factor in the etiology of OSA. Supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Foundation of the Québec Heart & Lung Institute. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.
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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 | 0.000 | 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) | 0.002 | 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".