Preliminary Biochemical Description of Brain Oxidative Stress Status in Irritable Bowel Syndrome Contention-Stress Rat Model

Abstract

Background and objectives: Oxidative stress and inflammation have been implicated in the etiology of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a common gastrointestinal functional disease. This study aimed to further characterize the contention-stress rat model by exploring a possible correlation between oxidative stress markers measured in brain tissues with behavioral components of the aforementioned model. Thus, it is hereby proposed a possible IBS animal model relevant to pharmacological and complementary medicine studies. Materials and Methods: Wild-type male Wistar rats (n = 5/group) were chronically exposed to 6-hour/day contention, consisting of isolating the animals in small, vital space-granting plastic devices, for seven consecutive days. Following contention exposure, temporal lobes were extracted and subjected to biochemical analyses to assess oxidative stress-status parameters. Results: Our results show increased brain oxidative stress in contention-stress rat model: decreased superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase activities and increased malondialdehyde production in the IBS group, as compared to the control group. Furthermore, the biochemical ratios which are used to evaluate the effectiveness of an antioxidant system on oxidative stress could be described in this model. Conclusions: The correlations between the behavioral patterns and biochemical oxidative stress features could suggest that this may be a complex model, which can successfully mimic IBS symptomatology further providing evidence of a strong connection between the digestive system, enteric nervous system, and the central nervous system.

Preliminary Study on the Tears Oxidative Stress Status and Sleep Disturbances in Irritable Bowel Syndrome Patients

“…Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity important risk factor for IBS pathology [16,35]. Thus, in this study, we showed that oxidative changes occur also in tear samples of IBS patients.…”

“…In this way, oxidative stress was shown to be significant in both systemic and mucosal levels as a result of innate immune dysfunction in IBS pathogenesis [15]. Moreover, our group previously showed that oxidative stress could be an important component of IBS being present in the cerebral tissues in a significant correlation with the exhibited behaviour [16,17].…”

“…Several studies suggested that oxidative stress plays an important role in IBS by being an active contributor to its development and its chronicity [12,33]. Our recent studies in stress exposure-based IBS animal models showed that oxidative stress changes could also occur in the brain [16,17] and intestinal tissues [34]. However, those observations could be discussed according to the studies which demonstrated that oxidative stress could be correlated to stress exposure, an 6…”

Irritable Bowel Syndrome between Molecular Approach and Clinical Expertise—Searching for Gap Fillers in the Oxidative Stress Way of Thinking

“…Moreover, they observed that the administration of plant mixture and spasmolytic agents changed the oxidative stress imbalance in colonic cells together with antioxidant capacity improvement, but with no evidence on the correlation type between harmful events and antioxidant defense. Similar studies also reported links between smooth muscles activity and total antioxidant capacity in a wrap-restrained IBS model [72] and oxidative stress and contention-stress IBS model [108], choline precursor and intestinal oxidative signaling in acetic acid-induced IBS rat model [109], circadian rhythm hormone and systemic oxidative stress in noise-stress gastrointestinal distress rat model [73]. In this way, our recent results showed that in a contention-stress IBS model, brain oxidative stress processes are significantly correlated to behavioral parameters suggesting that strong connection between the digestive system, enteric nervous system, and the central nervous system lead to the known IBS symptoms [108].…”

Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Neurological Deficiencies: Is There A Relationship? The Possible Relevance of the Oxidative Stress Status

“…Still, the common ground between some of the mentioned psychiatric illnesses (which are subtypes of affective syndromes) and, according to ROME IV criteria, IBS is the lower or greater extent of stress axis impairment [47]. Previous studies have shown that oxidative stress changes also occurred in stress-based animal models [46,48,49]. This could be a specific piece of evidence that suggests that a central nervous modulation pathway is implicated in IBS pathophysiology, with oxidative stress being a possible signaling pathway but also an unwanted effect.…”