“…In humans, prolonged chronic social stress is associated with higher cortisol levels, increased abdominal fat deposition, hyperglycemia, and IR (Epel et al, 2001;Aschbacher et al, 2014). The results obtained in experiment I demonstrate that the combination of an HFD and chronic stress impairs glucose metabolism and induces IR (as demonstrated by the IPGTT, ITT, and HOMA-IR index), with a loss of body weight gain and the gradual onset of symptoms of hyperglycemia (Zhang et al, 2014), which is in accordance with previous studies (Zardooz et al, 2006;Bruder-Nascimento et al, 2013; Kova cevi c et al, 2016; Zemdegs et al, 2016). In experiment II, there was a slight increase in appetite in the first week and a significant reduction in food intake after 1 week in the CF group, and a suppression of body weight gain was also observed in the CF rats (P , 0.05 vs. the control group), indicating a time-dependent interplay between the HFD and stress.…”