Our #systematic #review on chronic variable #stress (CVS) procedures in rodents is now out in Journal of Neuroendocrinology!
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jne.70051
A sister study to this, focussing on the reporting and justification of sample size in these studies (currently in review somewhere else) can be found on BioRXiv https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.26.615121v1
We systematically explored the literature where behavioural tests were performed following CVS. We found extreme variability in terms of the protocols used with any hardly any study using the same CVS protocol. We then asked whether the specific protocol influenced the outcomes of the study. For instance, we would expect a longer stress to cause a larger effect than a shorter one. We found only very small correlations between the strength of the stress protocol and the effect size measured in the study. In a case (forced swim test) correlation was even negative. Overall, our analysis reveals complex relation between stress protocols and behavioural outcomes and raises important ethical questions on the design of CVS studies.
Any comments very welcome, we're working on a couple of follow up manuscripts if anyone's interested!
