Effect of different forms of acute stress in the generation of reactive oxygen species in albino Wistar rats.

Stress is common for all organisms either in the form of eustress (beneficial) or as distress (harmful). Stress is highly diverse in present world and its effects in organisms are well studied. This study is a comparative effect of stress in the generation of reactive oxygen species in albino Wistar rats, which are seldom reported. Here animals were grouped into four and the test animals of each group were administered with any one of the following stress, namely forced swimming induced stress (FS), and noise induced stress (NS), immobilization stress (IS) and overcrowding stress (OS). After stress administration, serum cortisol was estimated as a bio marker of stress in the albino rats, and the liver homogenate were used to estimate superoxide dismutase (SOD) by using rat Elisa kit in the spectrophotometer. The data were processed with unpaired 't' test. The cortisol levels were found to be increased in a highly significant level (P < 0.001) in all the groups as compared to the normal control. And the stress level was found to be maximum in the FS group in comparison with other groups. The mean cortisol level in different stress groups such as FS, NS, IS and OS were found to be 4.15, 3.7, 3.63, 3.62 μ gm/dl respectively. Among all the stressed groups, the SOD level in the FS group were found to be increased in a highly significant level (P < 0.001) in comparison with normal control group. The SOD level in FS group was (30.75 U/mgm. protein) followed by OS (28.96), noise (28.88) and IS (28.77).