Influence of housing on the consequences of chronic mild stress in female rats

The chronic mild stress (CMS) paradigm was developed to model anhedonia in animals. The repeated administration of a series of unpredictable, mild stressors attempts to mimic the daily stress associated with the onset of clinical depression in humans. Male animals are predominantly used in these investigations despite significant, well-documented sex differences in human depression. In this study, the CMS procedure was modified to be more ecologically relevant to female animals. The effects of stress on sucrose preference, social interaction, rate of weight gain, and regularity of the estrous cycle in female Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were evaluated in both single- and paired-housed rats, during 3 weeks each of baseline, CMS, and post-CMS phases. The results indicate that only single-housed rats exposed to stressors have a reduced rate of weight gain, significantly attenuated sucrose preference levels, and increased social interaction scores during the CMS phase of the study. Housing condition more than exposure to stress appeared to contribute to the disruption of estrous cycling in some animals. These data suggest that housing affords some protection from the negative consequences of CMS, at least in female rats, and that lack of social interaction in the single-housing condition may render females more vulnerable to stress-related illnesses. The development of paradigms that model human depression should emphasize sex-specific differences.