NEW APPROACH TO STRESS RESEARCH IN PHOCIDS-POTENTIAL OF DEHYDROEPIANDROSTERONE AND CORTISOL/DEHYDROEPIANDROSTERONE RATIO AS MARKERS FOR STRESS IN HARBOR SEALS ( PHOCA VITULINA) AND GRAY SEALS ( HALICHOERUS GRYPUS)
| Autor: | Neele Hendrika Gundlach, Ursula Siebert, Marion Schmicke, Eva Ludes-Wehrmeister, Sophia Arlena Ulrich, Marcelo Gil Araujo |
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| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: |
0301 basic medicine
Cortisol secretion Male endocrine system Hydrocortisone Stress exposure Seals Earless medicine.medical_treatment Dehydroepiandrosterone Physiology 030209 endocrinology & metabolism Animals Wild Biology Phoca Animal Diseases Fight-or-flight response 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Marine mammal Stress Physiological medicine Animals Animal Husbandry Acute stressor General Veterinary General Medicine biology.organism_classification Steroid hormone 030104 developmental biology Animal Science and Zoology Female hormones hormone substitutes and hormone antagonists Biomarkers |
| Zdroj: | Journal of zoo and wildlife medicine : official publication of the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians. 49(3) |
| ISSN: | 1042-7260 |
| Popis: | Cortisol is known to reflect the level of the stress response. However, measuring the cortisol concentration only once fails to provide sufficient information about the duration of the stress exposure. Moreover, handling is an acute stressor and increases cortisol secretion especially in wildlife species. Yet, in phocids reliable indicators are missing that reflect potential chronic effects of stress. The adrenal-derived steroid hormone dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) has been described as biomarker for the assessment of the stress status but has not been applied to marine mammal stress research. Therefore, DHEA, the sulfated precursor DHEAS and the cortisol/DHEA ratio were determined in serum of different seals. One group consisted of harbor ( Phoca vitulina) and gray seals ( Halichoerus grypus) that were habituated to human handling. The other two groups included healthy and free-ranging seals suffering from a disease. Blood samples were taken from 11 habituated (six males, five females), 17 wild_healthy (13 males, four females), and nine wild_diseased seals (four males, five females). No differences in serum cortisol levels could be detected between wild_healthy and wild_diseased seals. On the contrary, wild_diseased seals showed the lowest DHEA concentration compared to the other two groups. Wild_diseased seals also revealed the highest cortisol/DHEA ratio compared to the habituated_zoo (2,074.7 ± 351.4 vs. 121.5 ± 26.8, P0.001) and wild_healthy seals (827.9 ± 214.3, P0.01). DHEA and the cortisol/DHEA ratio may reflect differences in the functionality of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and therefore represent valuable tools for the assessment of stress-related effects in seals. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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