Depressive behavior and stress ulcer in Wistar Kyoto rats

Strain Differences in the Behavioral Effects of Antidepressant Drugs in the Rat Forced Swimming Test

“…As expected from this profile, WKY rats readily acquire passive avoidance behaviors, but they demonstrate deficits when emitting active avoidance or anxiety-related behaviors (Paré 1994). Physiologically, the WKY strain is more susceptible to developing gastric ulceration to stress than other rat strains (Paré 1990(Paré , 1994, and they secrete higher levels of adrenocorticotropic hormone in response to restraint plus cold stress (Paré and Redei 1993).The FST is a behavioral test in rodents that predicts the clinical efficacy of many types of antidepressant treatments (Porsolt et al 1977(Porsolt et al , 1978. This test induces the development of immobility when a rodent has been placed in a tank of deep water for an extended period of time and makes only those movements necessary to keep its head above water (Porsolt et al 1977).…”

“…As expected from this profile, WKY rats readily acquire passive avoidance behaviors, but they demonstrate deficits when emitting active avoidance or anxiety-related behaviors (Paré 1994). Physiologically, the WKY strain is more susceptible to developing gastric ulceration to stress than other rat strains (Paré 1990(Paré , 1994, and they secrete higher levels of adrenocorticotropic hormone in response to restraint plus cold stress (Paré and Redei 1993).…”

“…WKY rats are a behavioral model for depressive behavior, because they are prone to adopt passive coping strategies in response to stress and, therefore, may model one aspect of clinical depression in humans (Paré and Redei 1993;Paré 1994;see Introduction). In this study, rats from both strains reacted differently when submitted to forced swimming, in agreement with previous reports (Paré 1989;Marti and Armario 1996).…”

“…A number of authors have reported robust interstrain differences both in baseline performances and the response to antidepressant drugs in animal behavioral tests that are sensitive to antidepressant drugs (Porsolt et al 1978; Van der Heyden et al 1987;Overstreet et al 1992;Paré, 1992;Armario et al 1995). One inbred rat strain, the Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rat bred initially from the Wistar rat as the control strain for the spontaneously hypertensive rat or SHR (Okamoto and Aoki 1963), has been proposed as an animal model of depressive behavior (Paré 1989;Paré and Redei 1993;Marti and Armario 1996), because they consistently demonstrate exaggerated behavioral and physiological responses to stress across a variety of situations in comparison to other strains. The WKY strain is one of the most susceptible to developing learned helplessness (Wieland et al 1986;Paré 1994) and demonstrates higher levels of behavioral immobility at baseline in the forced swimming test (FST;Paré 1994;Armario et al 1995), two rodent tests sensitive to antidepressant drugs.…”

Comparisons of Behavioral and Neurochemical Characteristics between WKY, WKHA, and Wistar Rat Strains

“…Bull et al showed that the SHR did not exhibit impaired acquisition of the DRL task, and that both SHR and SD learned the task significantly quicker than the WKY strain. Interestingly, others have tagged the WKY rats as a possibly stress-sensitive strain (Pare and Redei 1993;Pare and Kluczynski 1997). Numerous reports have indicated that the WKY rats display high anxiety and low locomotion reactivity compared with other strains (Pare 1992a(Pare , b, 1993(Pare , 1994Dugovic et al 2000).…”