Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
5923231 Physiology & Behavior 2015 9 Pages PDF
Abstract

•We compare the interaction between chronic pain and anxiety in two mice strains.•Pain and anxiety may not necessarily exacerbate one another in mouse models.•FVB mice were more resilient in behavioral responses to social stress than C57 mice.

Clinically, pain and anxiety frequently coexist; however, these two conditions' interaction is limited and contradictory in animal studies. In this study, we combined social defeat (SD) stress with Freund's adjuvant (CFA)-induced persistent inflammatory pain to investigate the reciprocal relationship between anxiety-like and nociceptive behaviors in two mouse strains. C57BL/6J mice subjected to the 10-day period of SD stress by repeated CD-1 mice aggression exhibited significant social interaction avoidance behaviors in the social interaction (SI) test, which is believed to represent the symptoms of anxiety. These mice also displayed anxiety-like behaviors in elevated plus maze (EPM) and open field (OF) tests. Compared to C57BL/6J mice, FVB/NJNju mice showed less basal social contact, but their behavioral responses to 10-day SD stress were more resilient. CFA-inflammatory mice showed robust mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia in both strains, but did not develop obvious social avoidance and anxiety-like behaviors 10 days after CFA-inflammation. Interestingly, CFA-inflammatory mice exposed to SD stress were not accompanied by a worsening of pain and anxiety-like behaviors in most tests. In contrast, the SD stress-induced social avoidance was significantly antagonized by combining with CFA-inflammatory pain. These findings suggest that persistent inflammatory pain and SD stress-induced anxiety may not necessarily exacerbate one another in animal models of comorbidity.

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