Abstract

Chronic stress is one of the causes of depression. Various daily factors, accumulating, can lead to the formation of a constant state of stress and anxiety. In this study, we measured the ability of peptides of royal jelly, drone brood, and bee honey up to 5 kDa to reduce anxiety under chronic stress conditions in male Wistar rats. To do this, the animals of the control and experimental groups were subjected to random stress factors for 14 days (2 factors per day), while simultaneously receiving 0.9% NaCl solution (control group) or aqueous solutions of the corresponding peptides intranasally at a concentration of 300 μg/kg of body weight (peptides were obtained by a combination of ultrafiltration, ion exchange chromatography and gel-filtration). After 14 days, the level of anxiety in animals of all groups was measured using such behavioral tests as “Open field”, “Forced swimming” and “Light-dark box”. It was found that in the OF test, animals treated with royal jelly and drone brood peptides show shorter freezing time, higher horizontal and vertical locomotor activity, spend more time on research activities and grooming; in the FST animals of the same groups spent more time actively swimming; in the LDB test animals of the same groups spent more time in the illuminated part of the experimental setup and crossed the border between the dark and light parts more times. The results indicate that rats treated with royal jelly and drone brood peptides have lower levels of stress and anxiety compared to animals that received 0.9% NaCl solution (control group) or a solution of bee honey peptides. After conducting behavioral tests, the animals were withdrawn from the experiment and the concentration of corticosterone and ACTH was determined in the blood serum. It was found that there is no any changes in hormone concentrations between rats from control or experimental groups. Probably, the peptides of drone brood and royal jelly have an anxiolytic effect, without affecting the work of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, but acting through intracerebral molecular targets.

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