Depression and anxiety behaviour in a rat model of chronic migraine

Background: Epidemiological and clinical studies have demonstrated comorbidity between migraine and affective disorders. However, it is unclear whether chronic migraine can lead to affective disorders in other animals. Methods: A classical chronic migraine rat model (repeated dura mater inflammatory soup [IS] infusion) was used to evaluate depression and anxiety behaviour via weight, sucrose preference test, open field test and elevated plus maze test. Results: We found that sucrose preference, locomotor and rearing behaviours, inner zoon distance percent, open-arm entries percent and serotonin and dopamine levels in the prefrontal cortex decreased significantly in the IS group compared with those in the control group; co-administration of low-dose amitriptyline ameliorated these deficits. However, no differences in weight, inner zone time percent, or open-arm time percent between the IS and control groups. These results were used to create new depression and anxiety scales to comprehensively assess and evaluate the degree of affective disorders in rats. Most of chronic migraine animals showed depression and anxiety like behaviors but a few didn't. Conclusions: Most of the chronic migraine rats were present depression and anxiety like behaviors. The new scales we created are expected to use in the future studies to find out the potential mechanism of affective disorders' comorbidity.