introduction: this study was conducted to determine the possible beneficial results of l-arginine on prefrontal cortex of rats which impressed by immobilization stress to define the synchronous impression of stress and nitric oxide (no) on evolution of prefrontal cortex of rats after birth. methods: forty-eight one month, male wistar rats were divided into two groups: stressed and non-stressed....

Reports in the clinical literature and studies of fmr1 knockout mice have led to the hypothesis that, in addition to mental retardation, fragile X syndrome is characterized by a dysregulation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis function. We have systematically examined this hypothesis by studying the effects of stress on adrenocorticotrophic hormone and corticosterone levels in adult, male f...

Tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), the rate-limiting enzyme in catecholamine biosynthesis, is regulated acutely by protein phosphorylation. No studies have systematically investigated the time course of TH phosphorylation in vivo in response to different stressors. We therefore determined the extent of TH phosphorylation at Ser19, Ser31, and Ser40 over a 40-min period in response to footshock or immobi...

Prolonged periods of muscular inactivity (e.g., limb immobilization) result in skeletal muscle atrophy. Although it is established that reactive oxygen species (ROS) play a role in inactivity-induced skeletal muscle atrophy, the cellular pathway(s) responsible for inactivity-induced ROS production remain(s) unclear. To investigate this important issue, we tested the hypothesis that elevated mit...

Surface modification by functional groups promotes endothelialization in biohybrid artificial lungs, but whether it affects endothelial cell stability under fluid shear stress, and the release of anti-thrombotic factors, e.g. nitric oxide (NO), is unknown. We aimed to test whether surface-modified silicone tubes containing different functional groups, but similar wettability, improve collagen i...

The prophylactic or curative antioxidant efficacy of crude extract and the active constituent of S. nigrum leaves were evaluated in modulating inherent antioxidant system altered due to immobilization stress in rat brain tissues, in terms of measurement of glutathione (GSH), lipid peroxidation (thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, TBARS), and free radical scavenging enzymes activities. Rats...

(+/-)3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "ecstasy") is an increasingly popular drug of abuse that acts as a neurotoxin to forebrain serotonin neurons. The neurochemical effects of the serotonin depletion following high doses of MDMA were investigated in response to acute immobilization stress. Male rats were treated with a neurotoxic dosing regimen of MDMA (10 mg/kg, i.p. every 2 h for fou...

Recent epidemiological studies have shown strong associations between low birth weight and the incidence of diabetes in the adult offspring. It has been hypothesized that exposure to maternal glucocorticoids programs cellular changes in the fetus which increases the susceptibility of the offspring to diabetes. Stressors produces large increases in maternal glucocorticoids. The present study det...

The objective of this study was to investigate the role of corticotropin-releasing factor receptors 1 (CRF(1)) and 2 (CRF(2)) in anxiety-like behavior and learning of C57BL/6J mice after exposure to a stressful stimulus. When C57BL/6J mice were exposed to immobilization (1 h) serving as stressful stimulus, context- and tone-dependent fear conditioning were impaired if the training followed imme...