Skin Conductance Reflects Drug-Induced Changes in Blood Levels of Cortisol, Adrenaline and Noradrenaline in Dogs

Abstract

ABSTRACT. To verify availability of skin conductance (SC) as an indicator for the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity in dogs, the changes in SC and blood levels of stress-related hormones induced by drugs were compared. SC and cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline levels were measured in 5 dogs on 4 occasions with or without drug-induced sedation at 7-day intervals (no treatment, intramuscular medetomidine 0.01 mg/kg, intramuscular acepromazine 0.1 mg/kg and intravenous fentanyl 0.02 mg/kg). The fentanyl treatment produced significantly higher levels of SC and plasma cortisol and adrenaline compared with the other 3 treatments. The plasma noradrenaline level also tended to be higher following the fentanyl treatment. These results indicate that SC may reflect changes in the SNS activities in dogs. KEY wORdS: nervous system, skin conductance, stress.doi: 10.1292/jvms.12-0478; J. Vet. Med. Sci. 75(6): 809-813, 2013 Stress is the physical and physiological influence exerted on bodily functions by threatening incidents. Transient stress is normally controlled by physiological activities that maintain the body in a steady state. However, exposure to continual stress is harder to control and may cause stress-related diseases, such as atrophy of lymph nodes [1], peptic ulcers [16] and high blood pressure [22]. To prevent these diseases and improve the quality of life, it is important to elucidate the stress levels experienced by the body.Traditional indicators of stress are stress-related hormones, such as cortisol and catecholamines [3, 5]. At first, stress is exhibited in the limbic system and is then transmitted to the rest of the body via 2 pathways: the hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenal axis (HPA axis) and the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary axis (SAM axis). The HPA axis activates the secretion of cortisol, whereas the SAM axis activates the secretion of catecholamines. Thus, the release of stress-related hormones can be used to evaluate the current stress level [3]. These hormones are contained in both blood and saliva [12]; thus, it is common to measure cortisol and catecholamine levels in blood and saliva samples. This measurement method, however, can be problematic, as the manner in which the sampling is performed can induce more stress, especially in animals, and affect the results. Moreover, the sample analysis is complicated and time-consuming. Therefore, researchers have been looking for a noninvasive and easy-to-use indicator of stress in animals.Recently, skin conductance (SC) has been used as an indicator of stress in humans [6,7,14,18]. Cells in the stratum corneum each have an electrical double layer, which causes polarization of the skin to elicit a capacitance under the influence of an electric field. The electrical impedance of the stratum corneum is short-circuited by resistive channels that are located between the cells [20]. The activity of sweat glands, which are under the control of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), changes the ion permeability of the resistive channels and influences ...

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