Pre-clinical Investigations of Therapeutic Markers Associated with Acute and Chronic Restraint Stress: A Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Based Contrast Metabolic Approach

Stress can be defined by two parameters, first the psychological sensing of pressure and second is the body's response. However, the exposure time to stress depicts the biological response produced against it. The effect of acute and chronic restraint stress on anxiety and the production of systemic metabolites were investigated in male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats. Behavioural test was performed on elevated plus maze (EPM) in conjunction with the statistical analysis that exhibited the habituation during long term exposure to stress when compared with the short-term stress. These behaviour-based changes resulted in interpolated concentration of some serum metabolites like carbohydrates, amino acids and lipids as analysed by NMR. Metabolic analysis along with the multivariate analysis demonstrated that the expression of concentration of metabolites including glutamate, proline, succinate, citrate, and tyrosine is higher in the acute stress than the chronic stress, while glucose and lipids i.e., LDL and VLDL changed in the opposite trends. Thus, the aforesaid study provides an analytical strategy for the characterization of perturbed metabolites induced due to the behavioural modifications in an organism. It may further aid in developing potential therapeutic markers at the metabolic levels which may broaden the treatment options for stress and anxiety related disorders.