Depressive-like behaviors are induced by chronic liver injury in male and female mice.

Depression is a highly prevalent mental disease and increasingly become a global public health problem. Recent studies have shown that the dysfunction of liver was associated with depression. However, the previous studies have not been fully explained the relationship between depression and liver injury. The present study was aimed to investigate whether chronic liver injury could induce depressive-like behavior. Chronic liver injury was induced by intraperitoneal injection of carbon (CCl), D-galactosamine (D-GalN) and thioacetamide (TAA), respectively. And the results showed that the serum activities of ALT in CCl, D-GalN and TAA groups were significantly increased in both male and female mice compared with the control group, while the activities of AST increased only in CCl group. Meanwhile, H&E staining showed that CCl, D-GalN and TAA induced hepatocytes injury in both male and female mice. Moreover, the sucrose preference was significantly decreased and the immobility time in forced swimming test and tail suspension test were significantly prolonged in CCl and D-GalN group compared with control group. Our findings demonstrated that chronic liver injury induced by CCl and D-GalN could induce depressive-like behaviors in mice.