Abstract
Human and animals studies support the idea that there is a gender-related co-morbidity of pain-related and inflammatory gastrointestinal (GI) diseases with psychological disorders. This co-morbidity is the evidence for the existence of GI-brain axis which consists of immune (cytokines), neural (vagus nerve) and neuroendocrine (HPA axis) pathways. Psychological stress causes disturbances in GI physiology, such as altered GI barrier function, changes in motility and secretion, development of visceral hypersensitivity, and dysfunction of inflammatory responses. Whether GI inflammation would exert impact on psychological behavior is not well established. We examined the effect of experimental gastritis on anxiety- and depression-like behaviors in male and female Sprague–Dawley rats, and evaluated potential mechanisms of action. Gastritis was induced by adding 0.1% (w/v) iodoacetamide (IAA) to the sterile drinking water for 7 days. Sucrose preference test assessed the depression-like behavior, open field test and elevated plus maze evaluated the anxiety-like behavior. IAA treatment induced gastric inflammation in rats of either gender. No behavioral abnormality or dysfunction of GI-brain axis was observed in male rats with IAA-induced gastritis. Anxiety- and depression-like behaviors were apparent and the HPA axis was hyperactive in female rats with IAA-induced gastritis. Our results show that gastric inflammation leads to anxiety- and depression-like behaviors in female but not male rats via the neuroendocrine (HPA axis) pathway, suggesting that the GI inflammation can impair normal brain function and induce changes in psychological behavior in a gender-related manner through the GI-to-brain signaling.
Highlights
The high co-morbidity between gastrointestinal (GI) diseases, including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and functional dyspepsia (FD), and psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety is the evidence for existence of GI-brain axis [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
Effect of gastric inflammation on psychological behaviors in male and female rats In view of the growing evidence that pain-related and inflammatory GI diseases are linked to anxiety and depression symptoms, the overall aim of our study was to test a possible relationship between gastric inflammation and psychological behaviors in rats
While it has previously been shown that psychological stressors such as experimentally induced depression- and anxiety-like phenotypes enhance the vulnerability to intestinal inflammation [33,34,35], we here explore whether GI
Summary
The high co-morbidity between gastrointestinal (GI) diseases, including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and functional dyspepsia (FD), and psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety is the evidence for existence of GI-brain axis [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. The activities of the three GI-brain axis pathways through which gastric inflammation may modulate the brain function and behavior were evaluated Since these pain-related and inflammatory GI diseases have a considerably higher prevalence in women than in men [15,16,17,18,19], we tested both male and female rats in order to reveal any gender difference in the possible impact of gastritis on psychological behavior. We measured the plasma levels of 17ß-estradiol and testosterone in female and male rats respectively
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