The identification of reliable biomarkers of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) responsiveness is a key challenge both at the clinical and preclinical level. Vagally-mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV), a surrogate measure of cardiac vagal efferent activity, is an ideal candidate. Yet, the effects of taVNS on vmHRV remain inconclusive, likely due to the high degree of heterogeneity in stimulation protocols (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn humans, sex disparities exist in the prevalence of social stress-related disorders, yet our understanding of the predisposing factors and underlying mechanisms is still elusive. Also at the preclinical level, the investigation of sex differences in social stress responses is limited. In this study, adult male and female wild-type Groningen rats were repeatedly exposed to witness social defeat stress (WS) to assess sex-specific behavioral, neuroendocrine, and cardiac responses to the same social stress paradigm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDriver Monitoring Systems (DMSs) play a key role in preventing hazardous events (e.g., road accidents) by providing prompt assistance when anomalies are detected while driving.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProg Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry
April 2024
Pharmacological inhibition of fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) activity has antidepressant-like effects in preclinical models of stress. In this study, we investigated whether the antidepressant-like effects of FAAH inhibition are associated with corresponding changes in gut microbial and lipidomic profiles, which are emerging as critical components in the pathophysiology of depression. Adult male Wistar rats experienced five weeks of repeated social defeat or control procedure and were treated with the FAAH inhibitor URB694 (0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBifidobacteria are commensal microorganisms that typically inhabit the mammalian gut, including that of humans. As they may be vertically transmitted, they commonly colonize the human intestine from the very first day following birth and may persist until adulthood and old age, although generally at a reduced relative abundance and prevalence compared to infancy. The ability of bifidobacteria to persist in the human intestinal environment has been attributed to genes involved in adhesion to epithelial cells and the encoding of complex carbohydrate-degrading enzymes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRationale: Exposure to traumatic events can lead to alterations in social and anxiety-related behaviors. Emerging evidence suggests that peripheral host-defense processes are implicated in the expression of stress-induced behavioral responses and may be targeted to mitigate the negative sequalae of stress exposure.
Objectives: In this study, we used the peripherally restricted FAAH inhibitor URB937 to investigate the effects of the fatty acyl ethanolamide (FAE) family of lipid mediators - which include the endocannabinoid anandamide and the endogenous PPAR-α agonists, oleoylethanolamide and palmitoylethanolamide - on behavioral and peripheral biochemical responses to two ethologically distinct rat models of stress.
The impact of psychosocial stressors on cardiovascular health in women is of growing interest in both the popular and scientific literature. Rodent models are useful for providing direct experimental evidence of the adverse cardiovascular consequences of psychosocial stressors, yet studies in females are scarce. Here, we investigated the effects of repeated exposure to witness social defeat stress (WS) on cardiomyocyte contractile function and intracellular Ca homeostasis in young adult wild-type Groningen female rats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present study aimed to investigate sex differences in measures of cardiac chronotropy and heart rate variability (HRV) in 132 young adult wild-type Groningen rats ( = 45 females). Electrocardiographic signals were recorded for 48 h in freely moving rats to quantify heart rate (HR) and inter-beat interval (IBI) as measures of cardiac chronotropy, and time- and frequency-domain HRV parameters as physiological readouts of cardiac vagal modulation. Females showed greater vagally-mediated HRV despite having higher HR and shorter IBI than males during undisturbed conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe effects of excitability, refractoriness, and impulse conduction have been independently related to enhanced arrhythmias in the aged myocardium in experimental and clinical studies. However, their combined arrhythmic effects in the elderly are not yet completely understood. Hence, the aim of the present work is to relate relevant cardiac electrophysiological parameters to enhanced arrhythmia vulnerability in the in vivo senescent heart.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Surgeons are exposed to high levels of intraoperative stress, which could compromise their psychological well-being in the long term. This study aimed at exploring the effects of real operations on the activity of stress response systems (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChronic social stress has been epidemiologically linked to increased risk for cardiovascular disease, yet the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms are still largely elusive. Mitochondrial (dys)function represents a potential intersection point between social stress exposure and (mal)adaptive cardiac responses. In this study, we used a rodent model of social stress to study the extent to which alterations in the cellular mechanical properties of the heart were associated with changes in indexes of mitochondrial function.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAppl Environ Microbiol
June 2022
Amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (AMC) is the most widely used antibiotic, being frequently prescribed to infants. Particular members of the genus are among the first microbial colonizers of the infant gut, and it has been demonstrated that they exhibit various activities beneficial for their human host, including promotion/maintenance of the human gut microbiota homeostasis. It has been shown that natural resistance of bifidobacteria to AMC is limited to a small number of strains.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnimal studies increasingly indicate that the gut microbiota composition and function can be involved in the pathophysiology and progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD) at multiple levels. However, few studies have investigated this putative gut-brain axis in human beings, and none of them considered diet as a determinant of intestinal microbiota composition. Epidemiological studies highlight that a high intake of fruit and vegetables, such as that typical of the Mediterranean diet, can modulate AD progression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMany factors acting during the neonatal period can affect neurological development of the infant. Neonatal seizures (NS) that frequently occur in the immature brain may influence autonomic maturation and lead to detectable cardiovascular signs. These autonomic manifestations can also have significant diagnostic and prognostic value.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResting heart rate variability (HRV), a surrogate index of cardiac vagal modulation, is considered a putative biomarker of stress resilience as it reflects the ability to effectively regulate emotions in a changing environment. However, most studies are cross-sectional, precluding longitudinal inferences. The high degree of uncertainty and fear at a global level that characterizes the COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique opportunity to explore the utility of HRV measures as longitudinal predictors of stress resilience.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study investigated epigenetic risk factors that may contribute to stress-related cardiac disease in a rodent model. Experiment 1 was designed to evaluate the expression of microRNA-34a (miR-34a), a known modulator of both stress responses and cardiac pathophysiology, in the heart of male adult rats exposed to a single or repeated episodes of social defeat stress. Moreover, RNA sequencing was conducted to identify transcriptomic profile changes in the heart of repeatedly stressed rats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) on cardiovascular autonomic parameters after a rugby match.
Methods: Resting and reactivity (ie, response to orthostasis) measures of mean arterial pressure, heart rate, and heart rate variability were assessed in 23 male players after a single session of OMT, both 18 to 20 hours after a rugby match and in a corresponding no-match condition, in a randomized, sham-controlled, crossover design.
Results: Signs of reduced heart rate variability and elevated mean arterial pressure and heart rate were found 18 to 20 hours after a rugby match compared with the no-match condition.
The osteopathic community has long hypothesized that the autonomic nervous system (ANS) represents one of the putative substrates through which osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) can improve body functions that have been altered by musculoskeletal alterations. Heart rate variability (HRV) is an important physiological measure of cardiac ANS activity. Emerging evidence suggests that OMT is associated with HRV changes that (i) are indicative of a larger cardiac vagal modulation, (ii) are independent from the part of the body needing treatment, (iii) occur even in the absence of musculoskeletal alterations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDepression is a well-established stress-related risk factor for several diseases, mainly for those with cardiovascular outcomes. The mechanisms that link depression disorders with cardiovascular diseases (CVD) include dysfunctions of the autonomic nervous system. Heart rate variability analysis is a widely-used non-invasive method that can simultaneously quantify the activity of the two branches of cardiac autonomic neural control and provide insights about their pathophysiological alterations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurosci Biobehav Rev
April 2020
Stressful experiences can be transmitted among individuals through social interactions. Like humans, rodents are social creatures whose behavior and physiology can be influenced by the emotional state of fellow rodents. This paper will review rodent studies which have explored two conditions of potential social stress contagion using the social defeat paradigm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe variability of heart period, measured as the time distance between two consecutive QRS complexes from the electrocardiogram (RR), was exploited to infer cardiac vagal control, while the variability of the duration of the electrical activity of the heart, measured as the time interval from Q-wave onset to T-wave end (QT), was proposed as an indirect index of cardiac sympathetic modulation. This study tests the utility of the concomitant evaluation of RR variability (RRV) and QT variability (QTV) markers in typifying cardiac autonomic control of humans under different experimental conditions and of rat groups featuring documented differences in resting sympatho-vagal balance. We considered: (i) 23 healthy young subjects in resting supine position (REST) undergoing head-up tilt at 45° (T45) and 90° (T90) followed by recovery to the supine position; (ii) 9 Wistar (WI) and 14 wild-type Groningen (WT) rats in unstressed conditions, where the WT animals were classified as non-aggressive (non-AGG, = 9) and aggressive (AGG, = 5) according to the resident intruder test.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBifidobacteria commonly constitute the most abundant group of microorganisms in the healthy infant gut. Their intestinal establishment is believed to be maternally driven, and their acquisition has even been postulated to occur during pregnancy. In the current study, we evaluated bifidobacterial mother-to infant transmission events in a rat model by means of quantitative PCR (qPCR), as well as by Internally Transcribed Spacer (ITS) bifidobacterial profiling.
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