Biobehavioral Medicine in Oncology Program, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Front Neurosci. 2011 Jul 14;5:88. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2011.00088. eCollection 2011.
Nausea and vomiting are common symptoms in patients with many diseases, including cancer and its treatments. Although the neurological basis of vomiting is reasonably well known, an understanding of the physiology of nausea is lacking. The primary barrier to mechanistic research on the nausea system is the lack of an animal model. Indeed investigating the effects of anti-nausea drugs in pre-clinical models is difficult because the primary readout is often emesis. It is known that animals show a behavioral profile of sickness, associated with reduced feeding and movement, and possibly these general measures are signs of nausea. Studies attempting to relate the occurrence of additional behaviors to emesis have produced mixed results. Here we applied a statistical method, temporal pattern (t-pattern) analysis, to determine patterns of behavior associated with emesis. Musk shrews were injected with the chemotherapy agent cisplatin (a gold standard in emesis research) to induce acute (<24 h) and delayed (>24 h) emesis. Emesis and other behaviors were coded and tracked from video files. T-pattern analysis revealed hundreds of non-random patterns of behavior associated with emesis, including sniffing, changes in body contraction, and locomotion. There was little evidence that locomotion was inhibited by the occurrence of emesis. Eating, drinking, and other larger body movements including rearing, grooming, and body rotation, were significantly less common in emesis-related behavioral patterns in real versus randomized data. These results lend preliminary evidence for the expression of emesis-related behavioral patterns, including reduced ingestive behavior, grooming, and exploratory behaviors. In summary, this statistical approach to behavioral analysis in a pre-clinical emesis research model could be used to assess the more global effects and limitations of drugs used to control nausea and its potential correlates, including reduced feeding and activity levels.
恶心和呕吐是许多疾病患者的常见症状，包括癌症及其治疗。尽管呕吐的神经基础已经得到了很好的理解，但对恶心的生理学还缺乏了解。恶心系统的机制研究的主要障碍是缺乏动物模型。事实上，由于主要的检测结果通常是呕吐，因此很难在临床前模型中研究抗恶心药物的效果。众所周知，动物会表现出一种与减少进食和运动相关的疾病行为特征，而这些一般的措施可能是恶心的迹象。试图将其他行为的发生与呕吐联系起来的研究得出了混合的结果。在这里，我们应用了一种统计方法，即时间模式（t 模式）分析，来确定与呕吐相关的行为模式。鼩鼱被注射化疗药物顺铂（呕吐研究的金标准）以诱导急性（<24 小时）和延迟（>24 小时）呕吐。呕吐和其他行为从视频文件中进行编码和跟踪。t 模式分析揭示了数百种与呕吐相关的非随机行为模式，包括嗅探、身体收缩变化和运动。几乎没有证据表明运动因呕吐的发生而受到抑制。进食、饮水和其他较大的身体运动，包括后肢站立、梳理和身体旋转，在真实数据与随机数据相比，在与呕吐相关的行为模式中明显较少。这些结果初步证明了呕吐相关行为模式的表达，包括减少摄食、梳理和探索行为。总之，这种在临床前呕吐研究模型中对行为进行分析的统计方法，可以用于评估用于控制恶心及其潜在相关因素的药物的更全面的影响和局限性，包括减少进食和活动水平。
