Dehydroepiandrosterone and Acute Stress Attenuation: An Interventional Rodent Study

Introduction: Stress activates hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis leading to the release of glucocorticoid that mediates the stress response. This adaptive response is self-limited but if persistent for prolonged periods can lead to disease states. Nature has endowed the body with efficient buffer systems to attenuate the stress effects and Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), a steroid hormone with neuromodulatory functions is implicated as an efficient candidate to buffer stress.

Aim: To assess the effect of prophylactic administration of DHEA in the attenuation of acute stress in male Wistar rats.

Materials and Methods: This interventional study was carried out at centre for Toxicology and Developmental Research, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai, between June 2021 and August 2021, in compliance with the animal welfare guidelines of CPCSEA, and in accordance to the protocol approved by Institutional Animal Ethics Committee. The 18 male Wistar rats approved for the study were segregated into 3 groups with 6 animals in control (no stress) group, 6 in stress group and 6 in intervention group that received DHEA prophylactically 30 min before stress procedure. Animals in stress and intervention groups were subjected to one hour immobilisation stress. Blood samples were collected from all animals after the stress period and serum corticosterone, the stress marker, was estimated. The data were expressed as mean±standard error of mean (mean±SEM) and Mann-Whitney U test was used to test the significant difference between the: (i) control and stress groups; (ii) stress and study groups; and (iii) control and study groups. The p-value <0.05 was considered significant. The analysis was done using SPSS version 23.0.

Results: The values of corticosterone in control, stress and intervention groups were 26.6±4.4 ng/mL, 51.6±3.9 ng/mL and 23.4±3.6 ng/mL, respectively. Significant difference in the mean serum corticosterone levels with p-value 0.013 between control and stress groups and with p-value 0.008 between stress and DHEA groups were observed.

Conclusion: It could be observed from the findings that prophylactic DHEA administration attenuated acute stress efficiently in male Wistar rats as reflected by the significant decrease in serum corticosterone levels in the group that received DHEA intervention, thus inferring the efficiency of DHEA in stress buffering.