Abstract
BackgroundPost traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be considered the result of a failure to recover after a traumatic experience. Here we studied possible protective and therapeutic aspects of environmental enrichment (with and without a running wheel) in Sprague Dawley rats exposed to an inescapable foot shock procedure (IFS).Methodology/Principal FindingsIFS induced long-lasting contextual and non-contextual anxiety, modeling some aspects of PTSD. Even 10 weeks after IFS the rats showed reduced locomotion in an open field. The antidepressants imipramine and escitalopram did not improve anxiogenic behavior following IFS. Also the histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor sodium butyrate did not alleviate the IFS induced immobility. While environmental enrichment (EE) starting two weeks before IFS did not protect the animals from the behavioral effects of the shocks, exposure to EE either immediately after the shock or one week later induced complete recovery three weeks after IFS. In the next set of experiments a running wheel was added to the EE to enable voluntary exercise (EE/VE). This also led to reduced anxiety. Importantly, this behavioral recovery was not due to a loss of memory for the traumatic experience. The behavioral recovery correlated with an increase in cell proliferation in hippocampus, a decrease in the tissue levels of noradrenalin and increased turnover of 5-HT in prefrontal cortex and hippocampus.Conclusions/SignificanceThis animal study shows the importance of (physical) exercise in the treatment of psychiatric diseases, including post-traumatic stress disorder and points out the possible role of EE in studying the mechanism of recovery from anxiety disorders.
Highlights
Exposure to a severe traumatic event will result in a prolonged stress response and anxiety in almost all people
To investigate whether a population of Sprague Dawley rats consisted of subpopulations of sensitive and resilient animals, we plotted for each control or inescapable foot shock procedure (IFS) exposed animal that we used during the last two years the distance moved in the open field arena one (n = 204) and three weeks (n = 127) after the IFS procedure (Figure 2)
We provide in an animal model evidence for a therapeutic effect of environmental enrichment and exercise in the treatment of Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Summary
Exposure to a severe traumatic event will result in a prolonged stress response and anxiety in almost all people. Reports about the use of aerobic exercise as a possible (add-on) therapy have emerged [6,7,8]. These reports fit in a much larger set of studies in which the beneficial effects of exercise have been studied on psychiatric diseases and cognitive functioning [9,10,11]. Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be considered the result of a failure to recover after a traumatic experience. We studied possible protective and therapeutic aspects of environmental enrichment (with and without a running wheel) in Sprague Dawley rats exposed to an inescapable foot shock procedure (IFS)
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