The effect of short and mid-term psychological stress on metabolic, hormonal and behavioral parameters in male rats

Stress specially the chronic psychological one is an important issue of our modern society. In this regard, this study has been investigated the effects of chronic psychological stress on metabolic, hormonal and behavioral parameters. The present study is an experimental intervention.The animals were divided into control and stressed groups and then subdivided into 15 and 30 days (n=7). Stress was induced by the communication box.This device consisted of 9 chambers. The animals received electrical shock in five chambers and the animals in four chambers exposed to various emotional. Chronic stress for 15 and 30 days (h / day1) was applied. Blood sampling was done by using retro orbital puncture method. The plasma levels of glucose, cholesterol, triglyceride, insulin, and corticosterone were measured. In addition, feed and water intake, latency to eat and drink, adrenal and body weights were determined. For statistical analysis a mixed analysis of variance with repeated measures within the stressed and control groups and independent measures between the two groups was performed by SPSS Version 16.0 program package. The level of significance was considered less than 0.05. Chronic psychological stress did not significantly change plasma corticosterone (P=0.41), insulin (P=0.45), glucose (P=0.47), triglyceride (P=0.07) and cholesterol (P=0.26) levels. 30 days chronic stress significantly increased feed intake compared to control ones (P=0.01). Whereas water intake (P=0.07), latency to eat (P=0.70) and drink (P=0.08) did not change significantly in the stressed group. 30 days exposure to the stress in both control and stressed groups increased body (P=0.002 and P=0.004 respectively) and adrenal (P=0.01 and P=0.04 respectively) weights markedly compared to day 15. short and mid-term psychological stress did not change hormonal and metabolic parameters significantly, whereas feed intake was significantly increased. However, no significant difference was observed in body weight of stressed animals compared to controls.