A Novel Method for Chronic Social Defeat Stress in Female Mice
Neuropsychopharmacology (2018) 43, 1276–1283 © 2018 American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. All rights reserved 0893-133X/18 www.neuropsychopharmacology.org A Novel Method for Chronic Social Defeat Stress in Female Mice ,1,2 1,2,3,4,5 1,5 1 1 Alexander Z Harris* , Piray Atsak , Zachary H Bretton , Emma S Holt , Raisa Alam , Mitchell P Morton1,2, Atheir I Abbas1,2, E David Leonardo1,2, Scott S Bolkan1, René Hen1,2 and 1,2,6 Joshua A Gordon 1Department of Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA; 2Division of Integrative Neuroscience, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, New York, USA; 3Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Radboud University 4 Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Historically, preclinical stress studies have often omitted female subjects, despite evidence that women have higher rates of anxiety and depression. In rodents, many stress susceptibility and resilience studies have focused on males as one commonly used paradigm—chronic social defeat stress—has proven challenging to implement in females. We report a new version of the social defeat paradigm that works in female mice. By applying male odorants to females to increase resident male aggressive behavior, we find that female mice undergo repeated social defeat stress and develop social avoidance, decreased sucrose preference, and decreased time in the open arms of the elevated plus maze relative to control mice. Moreover, a subset of the female mice in this paradigm display resilience, maintaining control levels of social exploration and sucrose preference.
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