ArticleBiology of sex differences2018
Sex differences in the traumatic stress response: PTSD symptoms in women recapitulated in female rats.
Article in Biology of sex differences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
49 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 96 citations in OpenAlex.
- Systematic Review and Methodological Considerations for the Use of Single Prolonged Stress and Fear Extinction Retention in Rodents.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2021Pooled it
- PAG-dependent defensive strategy selection: From stress-induced rigidity to adaptive flexibility.iScience · 2026Article
- The Single-Prolonged Stress Model Fails to Produce Behavioral or Corticosterone Alterations in Rats.eNeuro · 2026Article
- Longitudinal shifts in avoidance-based phenotypes in a predator odor conditioned place aversion model of posttraumatic stress disorder.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Transcriptomic profiles of susceptibility and resilience to stress in the amygdala and hippocampus of male rats.Neurobiology of stress · 2025Article
- Tracking conditioned fear in pair-housed mice using deep learning and real-time cue delivery.Neurobiology of stress · 2025Article
- Regulation of behavioral responses to single prolonged stress in male and female rats: Role of PACAP.Neurobiology of stress · 2025Article
- Light Cycle Phase Effects on Behavioral Responses to Stress Exposure in Rats.Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science : JAALAS · 2025Article
- Proteomic insights into extinction memory deficits in stress-susceptible female rats.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- New Insights into Contradictory Changes in Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) in Rodent Models of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).Neurochemical research · 2024Review
- Post traumatic stress disorder associated hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis dysregulation and physical illness.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2024Review
- Sex-Dependent Effects of Angiotensin Type 2 Receptor-Expressing Medial Prefrontal Cortex Interneurons in Fear Extinction Learning.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2024Article
- Blunted brachial blood flow velocity response to acute mental stress in PTSD females.Physiological reports · 2024Article
- Activation of GPER1 by G1 prevents PTSD-like behaviors in mice: Illustrating the mechanisms from BDNF/TrkB to mitochondria and synaptic connection.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2024Article
- Effects of acute stress on reward processing: A comprehensive meta-analysis of rodent and human studies.Neurobiology of stress · 2024Review
- Traumatic stress-enhanced alcohol drinking: Sex differences and animal model perspectives.Current addiction reports · 2024Article
- Basal forebrain cholinergic systems as circuits through which traumatic stress disrupts emotional memory regulation.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Review
- Indirectly acquired fear memories have distinct, sex-specific molecular signatures from directly acquired fear memories.PloS one · 2024Article
- Article
- Stress-related cellular pathophysiology as a crosstalk risk factor for neurocognitive and psychiatric disorders.BMC neuroscience · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects men and women differently. Not only are women twice as likely as men to develop PTSD, they experience different symptoms and comorbidities associated with PTSD. Yet the dearth of preclinical research on females leaves a notable gap in understanding the underlying neuropathology of this sex difference.
methodsUsing two standard measures of PTSD-like responses in rats, the acoustic startle response (ASR) and dexamethasone suppression test (DST), we tested the effects of traumatic stress in adult male and female rats using two rodent models of PTSD, single prolonged stress and predator exposure. We then examined the neural correlates underlying these responses with cFos and glucocorticoid receptor immunohistochemistry in brain regions implicated in the traumatic stress response.
resultsWe now report that adult male and female rats across two models of PTSD show consistent sex-specific responses that recapitulate fundamental differences of PTSD in men and women. Trauma-exposed males showed the well-established hyper-responsive phenotype of enhanced ASR and exaggerated negative feedback control of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, while the same traumatic event had little effect on these same measures in females. Dramatic sex differences in how trauma affected cFos and glucocorticoid receptor expression in the brain lend further support to the idea that the trauma response of male and female rats is fundamentally different.
conclusionsTwo standard measures, ASR and DST, might suggest that females are resilient to the effects of traumatic stress, but other measures make it clear that females are not resilient, but simply respond differently to trauma. The next important question to answer is why. We conclude that males and females show fundamentally different responses to trauma that do not simply reflect differences in resilience. The divergent effects of trauma in the brains of males and females begin to shed light on the neurobiological underpinnings of these sex differences, paving the way for improved diagnostics and therapeutics that effectively treat both men and women.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.