Renczés Emese, Borbélyová Veronika, Keresztesová Lenka, Ostatníková Daniela, Celec Peter, Hodosy Július
Institute of Molecular Biomedicine, Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia.
Institute of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia.
Andrologia. 2020 Aug;52(7):e13649. doi: 10.1111/and.13649. Epub 2020 May 20.
Adolescence is considered to be a critical period of sex hormone action (re)organising the brain and determining the behavioural phenotype. Such organisational effects in the brain might be the cause of sex differences in some behavioural features. In this experiment, we aimed to examine the role of pubertal sex hormones in development of anxiety in male rats. Male rats underwent gonadectomy prior to puberty onset, and were tested for explorative and anxiety-like behaviour in adolescence as well as in young adulthood. In adolescence, but not in adulthood, gonadectomised rats spend by 50% more time (p < .05) in the centre zone of the open-field than sham-operated counterparts. Young adult gonadectomised rats showed approximately 1.5-fold greater exploratory activity, in both open field (p < .001) and elevated plus maze (p < .01), in comparison with young adult control rats. Our results indicate that pre-pubertal castration may have test-specific anxiolytic effect in adolescent male rats, and it may attenuate the decline in explorative behaviour in young adult males. These differences in short- and long-term effects of gonadectomy could explain some contradictory results of previous studies on the role of testosterone in anxiety-like behaviour of male rodents. Thus, the age-specific consequences of pre-pubertal hormone deprivation should be considered.
青春期被认为是性激素作用于大脑进行（重新）组织并决定行为表型的关键时期。大脑中的这种组织效应可能是某些行为特征存在性别差异的原因。在本实验中，我们旨在研究青春期性激素在雄性大鼠焦虑症发展中的作用。雄性大鼠在青春期开始前接受去势手术，并在青春期和成年期接受探索性和焦虑样行为测试。在青春期而非成年期，去势大鼠在旷场中央区域停留的时间比假手术对照组多50%（p < 0.05）。与成年对照大鼠相比，成年去势大鼠在旷场（p < 0.001）和高架十字迷宫（p < 0.01）中的探索活动大约高出1.5倍。我们的结果表明，青春期前阉割可能对青春期雄性大鼠具有特定于睾丸的抗焦虑作用，并且可能减弱成年雄性大鼠探索行为的下降。去势手术短期和长期影响的这些差异可以解释先前关于睾酮在雄性啮齿动物焦虑样行为中作用的一些相互矛盾的研究结果。因此，应考虑青春期前激素剥夺的年龄特异性后果。
