Isidro Vargas-Moreno¹, Juan-Francisco Rodríguez-Landa², Héctor-Gabriel Acosta-Mesa³, Rafael Fernández-Demeneghi¹, Rosamaria Oliart-Ros⁴, Daniel Hernández Baltazar⁵, Socorro Herrera-Meza^6,

The present study evaluated anxiety-like behavior and neuronal changes in the CA1, CA3, and dentate gyrus subregions of the hippocampus that were induced by chronic sterculic oil administration in Wistar rats. The study included two experiments. The first experiment evaluated doses-response curves of sterculic oil (low dose, 0.06 g; medium dose, 0.12 g; high dose, 0.24 g). The second experiment evaluated the effects of sterculic oil on the number of adult hippocampal neurons. For all experiments, we employed a behavioral test battery that included the elevated plus maze, locomotor activity test, and forced swim test. All sterculic oil doses produced anxiogenic-like effects, without significant changes in locomotor activity or behavior in the forced swim test. We observed a reduction of neurons in the hippocampus in rat groups that were exposed to behavioral tests compared with a test-free vehicle group. Sterculia apetala seed oil administration produced anxiogenic-like effects, with a smaller effect of the medium dose on neurons in the CA1 and dentate gyrus regions of the hippocampus.

anxiety, behavior, hippocampus, neurons, Sterculia apetala