Early-life experience including maternal care profoundly influences hormonal stress responses during adulthood. Daily handling on postnatal day (P) 2-9, eliciting augmented maternal care upon returning pups to their cage, permanently modifies the expression of the stress neuromodulators corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) and glucocorticoid receptor (GR). We have previously demonstrated reduce...

Male spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) have a blunted pressure-natriuresis relationship and enhanced oxidative stress compared with female SHR. Furthermore, oxidative stress contributes to abnormal renal Na+ handling and renal damage in hypertension. The aim of this study was to determine whether a sex difference exists in renal inner medullary hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) levels and/or antioxi...

A large number of studies have indicated that stress exposure or the administration of stress hormones and other neuroactive drugs immediately after a learning experience modulates the consolidation of long-term memory. However, there has been little investigation into how arousal induced by handling of the animals in order to administer these drugs affects memory. Therefore, the present study ...

Dolphins in a captive environment are exposed to various kinds of stresses. Handling and transportation are stressful events for terrestrial mammals, and such stress may affect immune system function and increase susceptibility to infectious diseases. The same phenomenon could occur in dolphins, however, few studies have reported this in dolphins. The objective of this study was to evaluate the...

The goal of this study was to analyze circulating cortisol levels from tortoises (Testudo hermanni) to establish reference intervals and to develop guidelines for the interpretation of the effect of handling and transport stress. Blood samples were obtained from the caudal venous from 23 healthy juvenile tortoises (9 males and 14 females), aged 8-20 years, in basal condition, four weeks prior t...

This study investigated some aspects of stress research, including, also, the effects of chemical anaesthesia, in two important species for diversification in aquaculture, blackspot seabream, Pagellus bogaraveo and greater amberjack, Seriola dumerilii. The first part of the research (trial 1 and 2) was designed to determine the efficacy of clove oil as an anaesthetic alternative to MS-222. In t...

Aluminum is an omnipresent neurotoxicant and has been associated with several neuropathological disorders. Cerebrum and cerebellum have been shown to face augmented oxidative stress when animals are exposed to aluminum and high doses of ethanol. To establish the link between oxidative stress and neurobehavioral alterations, the present study was conducted to determine the extent of oxidative st...

Although increasing attention is given to both the causes and consequences of variation in animal personality, the measurement of personality in captive or free-ranging individuals remains an issue. In particular, one important question concerns whether personality should be established from the existence of complex behavioral syndromes (a suite of correlated behavioral traits) or could be more...

BACKGROUND Although repetitive exposure to stressful situations is thought to habituate the physical stress responses, work stress is experienced by medical personnel in emergency and intensive care units; performance should, however, remain stable over time. AIMS To investigate the neuroendocrine reactions (reactivity during and recovery after work) in experienced emergency caregivers during...

Exposing a pregnant sow to stress has been shown to affect the resulting offspring. Our objective was to determine if rough handling of pregnant sows altered the physiology of her offspring and if these alterations were different from an experimentally induced model of prenatal stress. Sow treatments consisted of i.v. injections of ACTH (1 IU/kg of BW), exposure to rough handling for 10 min (Ro...