Nelson Perez-Urrutia, Cristhian Mendoza, Nathalie Alvarez-Ricartes, Patricia Oliveros-Matus, Florencia Echeverria, J Alex Grizzell, George E Barreto, Alexandre Iarkov, Valentina Echeverria
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic psychological stress, and major depressive disorder have been found to be associated with a significant decrease in glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) immunoreactivity in the hippocampus of rodents. Cotinine is an alkaloid that prevents memory impairment, depressive-like behavior and synaptic loss when co-administered during restraint stress, a model of PTSD and stress-induced depression, in mice. Here, we investigated the effects of post-treatment with intranasal cotinine on depressive- and anxiety-like behaviors, visual recognition memory as well as the number and morphology of GFAP+ immunoreactive cells, in the hippocampus and frontal cortex of mice subjected to prolonged restraint stress...
September 2017: Experimental Neurology