INTR10

Authors:

Urbach, YK 1
Raber, KA 1
von Horsten, S 1

Institutions:

1 Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Franz-Penzoldt-Center, Experimental Therapy, Erlangen, Germany

Title of abstract : Differential effects of environmental enrichment by voluntary wheel running on Huntington’s transgenic rats as detected by automated phenotyping technology

Abstract text:

The PhenoMaster system (TSE Systems, Germany) is a modular, multi-purpose tool for the investigation of multidimensional physiobehavioral outputs of rats and is capable to automatically screen them in a home-cage-like environment for several parameters at a high temporal and spatial resolution. This novel approach allows experimenter independent monitoring of laboratory rodents and allows avoidance of stress-artifacts, higher throughput, higher sensitivity of measures (online, circadian), and combination of measurements potentially allowing multifactorial analysis and identification of novel combined behavioral and physiological dimensions.
Rats transgenic for Huntington’s disease are characterize with respect to changes of the phenotype due to environmental enrichment by voluntary wheel running.
In the present experiments a set of tgHD animals was divided into two subgroups (2 x 2 design); one group was introduced to the PhenoMaster with a running wheel and one group was screened without the wheel. Both groups where tested for 72h per experiment at the age of 4, 7, 10 and 13 months.
Screening of body weight changes revealed differences. Divided in groups with wheel and without wheel, the wild-type group with wheel have a higher body weight and the transgenic group without wheel develop a higher bodyweight. For food and fluid consumption transgenic HD rats always have a higher food and lower fluid consumption. For the activity, the results clearly show a reduction of wheel running in the tgHD rats. As for the respiratory exchange rate bimodal differences are seen. Classical behavioral tests are ongoing.
Voluntary wheel running within automated home-cage environments differentially affects wild-type and tgHD rats and modulates the phenotype.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 16:08 and is filed under HD: clinical applications, all. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.