Carbohydrate-enriched diet predispose to anxiety and depression-like behavior after stress in mice

Objectives: Obesity is a chronic disease frequently associated with serious co-morbidities, such as diabetes type II, metabolic syndrome, and psychiatric disorders. Little is known, however, regarding the behavioral consequences of modified diet constituents and the propensity to development of stress related disorders. Thus, the aim of this study was to verify whether chronic exposure to a normocaloric/high-carbohydrate diet will modify the animal's behavior after different stressful stimuli.Methods: BALB/c mice were fed for 12 weeks with a standard chow diet or high refined carbohydrate-containing diet (HC). Following this period, independent groups of animals were exposed to different stress paradigms: 1 – two hours of restraint stress followed by exposure to the Elevated Plus Maze test (EPM) 24 hours later; 2 – The contextual fear conditioning (CFC) test and 3 – the tail suspension test (TST).Results: Despite no change on total body weight, animals fed with HC diet showed increase in serum leptin leve...