RESUMO
Sepsis and its complications are the leading causes of mortality in intensive care units, accounting for 10-50 percent of deaths. Intensive care unit survivors present long-term cognitive impairment, including alterations in memory, attention, concentration, and/or global loss of cognitive function. In the present study, we investigated behavioral alterations in sepsis-surviving rats. One hundred and ten male Wistar rats (3-4 months, 250-300 g) were submitted to cecal ligation and puncture (CLP), and 44 were submitted to sham operation. Forty-four rats (40 percent) survived after CLP, and all sham-operated animals survived and were used as control. Twenty animals of each group were used in the object recognition task (10 in short-term memory and 10 in long-term memory), 12 in the plus-maze test and 12 in the forced swimming test. Ten days after surgery, the animals were submitted individually to an object recognition task, plus-maze and forced swimming tests. A significant impairment of short- and long-term recognition memory was observed in the sepsis group (recognition index 0.75 vs 0.55 and 0.74 vs 0.51 for short- and long-term memory, respectively (P < 0.05). In the elevated plus-maze test no difference was observed between groups in any of the parameters assessed. In addition, sepsis survivors presented an increase in immobility time in the forced swimming test (180 vs 233 s, P < 0.05), suggesting the presence of depressive-like symptoms in these animals after recovery from sepsis. The present results demonstrated that rats surviving exposure to CLP, a classical sepsis model, presented recognition memory impairment and depressive-like symptoms but not anxiety-like behavior.
Assuntos
Animais , Masculino , Ratos , Transtornos de Ansiedade/etiologia , Aprendizagem da Esquiva/fisiologia , Doenças do Ceco/fisiopatologia , Transtorno Depressivo/etiologia , Obstrução Intestinal/fisiopatologia , Perfuração Intestinal/fisiopatologia , Choque Séptico/fisiopatologia , Transtornos de Ansiedade/fisiopatologia , Modelos Animais de Doenças , Transtorno Depressivo/fisiopatologia , Aprendizagem em Labirinto , Memória de Curto Prazo/fisiologia , Ratos Wistar , Natação , Choque Séptico/psicologiaRESUMO
Dissection of 44 specimens of the colubrid snake Thamnodynastes strigatus (Serpentes: Colubridae) provided data on food habits. Prey items include frogs (71.4 percent of the sample), rodents (14.3 percent), fishes (10.7 percent), and lizards (3.6 percent). The most of the anuran species recorded (Bufo sp., Leptodactylus sp., Physalaemus cuvieri and Scinax fuscovarius) are ground dwellers or call at the water level. Field observations provided information on the feeding behavior