Item Details

title

Is the Relationship Between Early Life Stress and Anxiety-like Behaviors Mediated by Microglia Functioning in Female Long Evans Rats?

author

Blumberg, Matthew

abstract

Extensive, cross disciplinary research has revealed a strong relationship between early life stress (ELS) and increased risk of neuropsychiatric disorders, like anxiety. Though this relationship has been extensively investigated in preclinical rodent models, the vast majority of this work has not included female subjects. With this, recent experiments have revealed sex differences in vulnerability windows to adolescent social isolation, a well-validated rodent model of early life stress. Notably, this finding has allowed for the establishment of an adolescent social isolation paradigm that promotes anxiety-related phenotypes in female rats. Interestingly, microglia cells, typically known for their role mediating the inflammatory response, may be neurologically implicated in this relationship between early life stress and vulnerability to anxiety. Namely, there is a growing body of work that suggests that microglia’s susceptibility to ELS, and their involvement with the brain’s stress response, may contribute to some of the maladaptive phenotypes promoted by early life stress. The current experiment sought to leverage the female adolescent social isolation model to test the causal role of microglia in anxiety- related behaviors that emerge following exposure of an early life stressor. The present experiment tested the causal role of microglia during a social isolation paradigm with the use of the colony stimulating factor 1 receptor inhibitor, PLX 3397, which mutes microglia activity when administered. Though PLX 3397 did mute microglia activity in treated rats, it had little effect on their display of anxiety-like behaviors. Overall, further research needs to be done to determine the role of microglia in the observed effects of ELS.

subject

Anxiety

Anxiety-like behaviors

Early Life Stress

Female Long Evans Rats

Immune response

Microglia

contributor

Weiner, Jeffrey L (advisor)

Raab-Graham, Kimberly (committee member)

Ferris, Mark J (committee member)

date

2024-05-23T08:35:52Z (accessioned)

2024-11-22T09:30:11Z (available)

2024 (issued)

degree

Neuroscience (discipline)

embargo

2024-11-22 (terms)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/109397 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Thesis