Davenport Matthew D, Tiefenbacher Stefan, Lutz Corrine K, Novak Melinda A, Meyer Jerrold S
Division of Behavioral Biology, New England Primate Research Center, Harvard Medical School, 1 Pine Hill Drive, Southborough, MA 01772, USA.
Gen Comp Endocrinol. 2006 Jul;147(3):255-61. doi: 10.1016/j.ygcen.2006.01.005. Epub 2006 Feb 17.
Short-term changes in activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) system are routinely assessed by measuring glucocorticoid or metabolite concentrations in plasma, saliva, urine, or feces. However, there are no current methods for determining long-term (i.e., weeks or months) activity of this system. Herein, we describe the development and validation of a simple procedure for measuring cortisol concentrations in the hair of rhesus macaques. This procedure involves two brief isopropanol washes of the hair strands to remove surface contaminants, subsequent powdering of the washed and dried hair, a 24-h methanol extraction followed by evaporation of the solvent and reconstitution of the extract in assay buffer, and finally analysis of the extracted cortisol by a sensitive and specific enzyme immunoassay. Our results confirm the specificity of the procedure for cortisol, show that proximal and distal segments of hair do not differ in their cortisol concentration, and demonstrate that a significant and prolonged stressful experience produces a significant increase in hair cortisol. This new procedure should be valuable for assessing baseline HPA activity in nonhuman primates (and, with appropriate validation, in other species as well) over relatively long periods of time, and also for monitoring chronic stress that might be associated with various experimental manipulations.
下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺皮质（HPA）系统活动的短期变化通常通过测量血浆、唾液、尿液或粪便中的糖皮质激素或代谢物浓度来评估。然而，目前尚无确定该系统长期（即数周或数月）活动的方法。在此，我们描述了一种测量恒河猴毛发中皮质醇浓度的简单方法的开发和验证。该方法包括用异丙醇对毛发进行两次简短洗涤以去除表面污染物，随后将洗涤并干燥后的毛发研磨成粉末，进行24小时的甲醇提取，然后蒸发溶剂并将提取物重悬于测定缓冲液中，最后通过灵敏且特异的酶免疫测定法分析提取的皮质醇。我们的结果证实了该方法对皮质醇的特异性，表明毛发近端和远端的皮质醇浓度没有差异，并证明显著且持续的应激经历会导致毛发皮质醇显著增加。这种新方法对于评估非人类灵长类动物（经过适当验证后也可用于其他物种）在相对较长时间内的基线HPA活动以及监测可能与各种实验操作相关的慢性应激应该是有价值的。
