Department of Pharmacology, Federal University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; LiNC, Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Clinical Neurosciences, Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology, Federal University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; National Institute for Translational Medicine, INCT-TM, CNPq, FAPESP, CAPES, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil.
Department of Pharmacology, Federal University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; LiNC, Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Clinical Neurosciences, Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology, Federal University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry. 2018 Jul 13;85:16-22. doi: 10.1016/j.pnpbp.2018.03.021. Epub 2018 Apr 4.
Questionnaires that assess symptoms of schizophrenia patients undergo strict statistical validation, often using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). CFA allows testing the existence of a trait that both collectively explains the symptoms and gathers the information in a single general index. In rodents, some behaviors are used to model psychiatric symptoms, but no single test or paradigm adequately captures the disorder's phenotype in toto. This work investigated the existence of a behavioral trait in the SHR strain underlying five behavioral tasks used in schizophrenia animal studies and altered in this strain: locomotor activity, rearing behavior, social interaction, prepulse inhibition of startle and contextual fear conditioning. The analysis was conducted on a sample of Wistar (n = 290) and Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats (SHRs, n = 290). CFA showed the existence of a continuous trait in both strains, and higher values among SHRs. This work is the first to demonstrate the existence of a schizophrenia-like trait in an animal model. We suggest that using CFA to evaluate behavioral parameters in animals might facilitate the pre-clinical investigation of psychiatric disorders, diminishing the gap between animal and human studies.
用于评估精神分裂症患者症状的问卷需要经过严格的统计学验证，通常使用验证性因子分析（CFA）。CFA 可以测试是否存在一种特质，这种特质既能综合解释症状，又能将信息汇集到一个单一的综合指标中。在啮齿动物中，一些行为被用于模拟精神疾病症状，但没有单一的测试或范式能够充分捕捉到该疾病的全部表型。本研究旨在调查 SHR 大鼠中是否存在一种行为特征，这种行为特征与五种用于精神分裂症动物研究且在该大鼠中发生改变的行为任务有关：运动活动、站立行为、社会互动、惊跳反射前脉冲抑制和情境恐惧条件反射。该分析在 Wistar（n=290）和自发性高血压大鼠（SHR，n=290）样本中进行。CFA 显示在两种大鼠中都存在一种连续的特质，并且 SHR 大鼠的特质值更高。这项工作首次证明了在动物模型中存在一种类似精神分裂症的特质。我们建议，使用 CFA 来评估动物的行为参数可能有助于精神疾病的临床前研究，缩小动物研究和人类研究之间的差距。
