Social status in mice: behavioral, endocrine and immune changes are context dependent

Development of Dry Skin in the NOA Mouse Under Individual Housing Conditions: A Potentially Useful Animal Model for Evaluating Moisturizing Effects

“…In brief, these findings suggest that various socio-psychological factors may be involved in the development of dry skin. In order to support this hypothesis, it would be desirable to conduct further investigations on the effects of social rank on water content, since a social ranking system has been described in mice kept under group housing conditions [5].…”

Effects of Housing Conditions on the Development of Wet Skin Lesions in the NOA Mouse

“…Individual or isolated housing of rodents is widely employed as a model of psychological stress, particularly in the field of psycho-neurological medicine [3,5,9,15,17]. When group-rearing mice in cages, littermate group housing is considered to be a more stable social environment than non-littermate group housing [4,5,17]. Therefore, socio-psychological factors appear to be involved in the onset and aggravation of wet skin lesions in the NOA mouse.…”

Chronic stress aggravates glucose intolerance in leptin receptor-deficient (db/db) mice

“…The protocol used has been described in detail in Sanghez et al (2013) and is a modified version of our standard procedure (Bartolomucci et al 2001(Bartolomucci et al , 2004(Bartolomucci et al , 2009. Briefly, stable resident/intruder pairs of adult male mice were established after a baseline period lasting 5 days.…”

“…At the beginning of the 4-week stress phase, each CD1 male resident mouse received a db/db intruder mouse and the two animals were allowed to freely interact for a maximum of 10 min. Invariably the interaction led to the social subordination of the db/db subject, as determined by direct observation by a trained observer on the basis of the display of upright posture, flight behavior and squeaking vocalization by the subordinate individual (Bartolomucci et al 2001(Bartolomucci et al , 2009Dadomo et al 2011). After the interaction that was carried out between 0830 and 0930 hours, dominant and subordinate mice were separated by a perforated partition, which allowed continuous visual, auditory and olfactory contact but no physical interaction.…”

“…After the interaction that was carried out between 0830 and 0930 hours, dominant and subordinate mice were separated by a perforated partition, which allowed continuous visual, auditory and olfactory contact but no physical interaction. Ageand weight-matched db/db mice housed in groups of three were included as the control group according to our standard protocol and received daily gentle handling at the same time of the social defeat procedure (Bartolomucci et al 2001(Bartolomucci et al , 2004(Bartolomucci et al , 2009Sanghez et al 2013). …”