Planning genomic study in an animal model of depression: A preliminary report

Introduction: Interaction of several genes is responsible for psychiatric diseases such as depression. Despite the numerous microarray studies in this field, findings are controversial and hard to conclude. Methods: Male Wistar rats were randomly selected to receive Chronic Mild Stress model for 4 weeks. Different aspects of depression were measured by forced swimming test, open field trial and sucrose preference tests in the experience group and controls. Results: Sucrose was preferred by 40% of CMS group and 80% of controls (p=0.025). Twenty percent of CMS group and 80% of controls were “active” (p=0.001). Last escape was at minute 238 for CMS group and minute 245 for controls and controls had more escape efforts. Conclusion: This paper is a preliminary report of a genomic study on animal model of depression which tries to achieve reliable results by a joint of clinical view with recent techniques. Predicted challenges in this procedure and the solutions as well as the limitations may be helpful for future researches.