Sex-Specific Retinal Anomalies Induced by Chronic Social Defeat Stress in Mice

Eric Arsenault; Andrée-Anne Lavigne; Samaneh Mansouri; Anne-Marie Gagné; Kimberley Francis; Thibault P Bittar; Francis Quessy; Khaled Abdallah; Annie Barbeau; Marc Hébert; Benoit Labonté

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2021.714810

Sex-Specific Retinal Anomalies Induced by Chronic Social Defeat Stress in Mice

Front Behav Neurosci. 2021 Aug 12:15:714810. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2021.714810. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Eric Arsenault^{1

2}, Andrée-Anne Lavigne¹, Samaneh Mansouri^{1

3}, Anne-Marie Gagné¹, Kimberley Francis¹, Thibault P Bittar^{1

2}, Francis Quessy^{1

2}, Khaled Abdallah¹, Annie Barbeau¹, Marc Hébert^{1

4}, Benoit Labonté^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ CERVO Brain Research Centre, Centre Intégré Universitaire de Santé et des Services Sociaux de la Capitale Nationale, Quebec City, QC, Canada.
² Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, Université Laval, Quebec City, QC, Canada.
³ Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Université Laval, Quebec City, QC, Canada.
⁴ Department of Ophthalmology and Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Université Laval, Quebec City, QC, Canada.

Abstract

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the most common consequences of chronic stress. Still, there is currently no reliable biomarker to detect individuals at risk to develop the disease. Recently, the retina emerged as an effective way to investigate psychiatric disorders using the electroretinogram (ERG). In this study, cone and rod ERGs were performed in male and female C57BL/6 mice before and after chronic social defeat stress (CSDS). Mice were then divided as susceptible or resilient to stress. Our results suggest that CSDS reduces the amplitude of both oscillatory potentials and a-waves in the rods of resilient but not susceptible males. Similar effects were revealed following the analysis of the cone b-waves, which were faster after CSDS in resilient mice specifically. In females, rod ERGs revealed age-related changes with no change in cone ERGs. Finally, our analysis suggests that baseline ERG can predict with an efficacy up to 71% the expression of susceptibility and resilience before stress exposition in males and females. Overall, our findings suggest that retinal activity is a valid biomarker of stress response that could potentially serve as a tool to predict whether males and females will become susceptible or resilient when facing CSDS.

Keywords: biomarker (BM); chronic social defeat stress (CSDS); electroretinogram (ERG); major depressive disorder (MDD); retina; sexual dimorphism; stress resilience; stress susceptibility.