Time matters: pathological effects of repeated psychosocial stress during the active, but not inactive, phase of male mice

Recent findings in rats indicated that the physiological consequences of repeated restraint stress are dependent on the time of day of stressor exposure. To investigate whether this is also true for clinically more relevant psychosocial stressors and whether repeated stressor exposure during the light phase or dark phase is more detrimental for an organism, we exposed male C57BL/6 mice to social defeat (SD) across 19 days either in the light phase between Zeitgeber time (ZT) 1 and ZT3 (SDL mice) or in the dark phase between ZT13 and ZT15 (SDD mice). While SDL mice showed a prolonged increase in adrenal weight and an attenuated adrenal responsiveness to ACTH in vitro after stressor termination, SDD mice showed reduced dark phase home-cage activity on observation days 7, 14, and 20, flattening of the diurnal corticosterone rhythm, lack of social preference, and higher in vitro IFN gamma secretion from mesenteric lymph node cells on day 20/21. Furthermore, the colitis-aggravating effect of SD was more pronounced in SDD than SDL mice following dextran sulfate sodium treatment. In conclusion, the present findings demonstrate that repeated SD effects on behavior, physiology, and immunology strongly depend on the time of day of stressor exposure. Whereas physiological parameters were more affected by SD during the light/inactive phase of mice, behavioral and immunological parameters were more affected by SD during the dark phase. Our results imply that repeated daily SD exposure has a more negative outcome when applied during the dark/active phase. By contrast, the minor physiological changes seen in SDL mice might represent beneficial adaptations preventing the formation of those maladaptive consequences. Journal of Endocrinology (2012) 215, 425-437