A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Chronic Stress on the Prefrontal Transcriptome in Animal Models and Convergence with Existing Human Data.

Background: Chronic stress is a major risk factor for psychiatric disorders, including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Chronic stress can cause structural alterations like grey matter atrophy in key emotion-related areas such as the prefrontal cortex (PFC). To identify biological pathways affected by chronic stress in the PFC, researchers have performed transcriptional profiling (RNA-sequencing, microarray) to measure gene expression in rodent models. However, transcriptional signatures in the PFC that are shared across different chronic stress paradigms and laboratories remain relatively unexplored. Methods: We performed a meta-analysis of publicly available transcriptional profiling datasets within the Results: We identified 133 genes that were consistently differentially expressed across chronic stress studies and paradigms (false discovery rate (FDR)<0.05). Fast Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (fGSEA) revealed 53 gene sets enriched with differential expression (FDR<0.05), dominated by glial and neurovascular markers ( Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that chronic stress induces a robust, cross-paradigm PFC signature characterized by down-regulation of glia/myelin and vascular pathways and suppression of immediate-early gene activity, highlighting cellular processes linking chronic stress exposure, PFC dysfunction, and psychiatric disorders.