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Publication
Palatable food reduces anxiety-like behaviors and HPA axis responses to stress
in female rats in an estrous-cycle specific manner.
Authors Egan AE, Seemiller LR, Packard AEB, Solomon MB, Ulrich-Lai YM
Submitted By Submitted Externally on 12/3/2021
Status Published
Journal Hormones and behavior
Year 2019
Date Published 9/1/2019
Volume : Pages 115 : 104557
PubMed Reference 31310760
Abstract Eating tasty foods dampens responses to stress - an idea reflected in the
colloquial term 'comfort foods'. To study the neurobiological mechanisms by
which palatable foods provide stress relief, we previously characterized a
limited sucrose intake (LSI) paradigm in which male rats are given twice-daily
access to 4?ml of 30% sucrose solution (vs. water as a control), and
subsequently have reduced hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis
responsivity and anxiety-related behaviors. Notably, women may be more prone to
'comfort feeding' than men, and this may vary across the menstrual cycle,
suggesting the potential for important sex and estrous cycle differences. In
support of this idea, LSI reduces HPA axis responses in female rats during the
proestrus/estrus (P/E), as opposed to the diestrus 1/diestrus 2 (D1/D2) estrous
cycle stage. However, the effect of LSI on anxiety-related behaviors in females
remains unknown. Here we show that LSI reduced stress-related behaviors in
female rats in the elevated plus-maze and restraint tests, but not in the open
field test, though only during P/E. LSI also decreased the HPA axis stress
response primarily during P/E, consistent with prior findings. Finally, cFos
immunolabeling (a marker of neuronal activation) revealed that LSI increased
post-restraint cFos in the central amygdala medial subdivision (CeM) and the bed
nucleus of the stria terminalis posterior subnuclei (BSTp) exclusively during
P/E. These results suggest that in female rats, palatable food reduces both
behavioral and neuroendocrine stress responses in an estrous cycle-dependent
manner, and the CeM and BSTp are implicated as potential mediators of these
effects.




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