Abstract
The social stress of crowding for 3, 7 and 14 days considerably reduced the increase in serum corticosterone elicited by intracerebroventricular administration of isoprenaline, a β-adrenergic agonist, on the 3rd and 7th days of crowding. The corticosterone response to clonidine, an α2-adrenergic agonist, was significantly diminished only after 3 days of crowding and this reduction was paralleled by a significant decrease in hypothalamic histamine content. The stimulatory effect of phenylephrine, an α2-adrenergic agonist, was not significantly changed by crowding stress. Social crowding stress caused almost total and persistent reduction in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) responsiveness to noradrenaline which stimulates the HPA axis via both α- and β-adrenergic receptors.
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Bugajski, J., Gądek-Michalska, A., Borycz, J. et al. Effect of crowding on corticosterone responses to central adrenergic stimulation. Agents and Actions 41 (Suppl 1), C73–C74 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02007773
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02007773