Acute Stress Affects the Relaxin/Insulin‐Like Family Peptide Receptor 3 mRNA Expression in Brain of Pubertal Male Wistar Rats

ABSTRACT The current literature suggests that relaxin‐3/relaxin/insulin‐like family peptide receptor 3 (RLN‐3/RXFP‐3) system is involved in the pathophysiology of affective disorders because the results of anatomical and pharmacological studies have shown that the RLN‐3 signaling pathway plays a role in modulating the stress response, anxiety, arousal, depression‐like behavior, and neuroendocrine homeostasis. The risk of developing mental illnesses in adulthood is increased by exposure to stress in early periods of life. The available data indicate that puberty is especially characterized by the development of the neural system and emotionality and is a “stress‐sensitive” period. The presented study assessed the short‐term changes in the expression of RLN‐3 and RXFP‐3 mRNA in the stress‐dependent brain regions in male pubertal Wistar rats that had been subjected to acute stress. Three stressors were applied from 42 to 44 postnatal days (first day: a single forced swim; second day: stress on an elevated platform that was repeated three times; third day: restraint stress three times). Anxiety (open field, elevated plus maze test) and anhedonic‐like behavior (sucrose preference test) were estimated during these tests. The corticosterone (CORT) levels and blood morphology were estimated. We found that the RXFP‐3 mRNA expression decreased in the brainstem, whereas it increased in the hypothalamus 72 h after acute stress. These molecular changes were accompanied by the increased levels of CORT and anxiety‐like behavior detected in the open field test that had been conducted earlier, that is, 24 h after the stress procedure. These findings shed new light on the neurochemical changes that are involved in the compensatory response to adverse events in pubertal male rats and support other data that suggest a regulatory interplay between the RLN‐3 pathway and the hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis activity in the mechanisms of anxiety‐like behavior.