Figure 3. Divergent effects of prior binge vs control treatment on plasma corticosterone (CORT) levels during withdrawal but not following predator odor stress (PS) in male (A) and female (B) mice.

Plasma CORT levels were measured in all mice following the 1^st and 4^th PS exposure and at 24 h withdrawal after the final drinking session. For comparative purposes, mean “baseline” CORT levels (from Cozzoli et al., 2014) were 13.085 μg/dL for males and 15.21 μg/dL for females. CORT levels following PS1 and PS4 were higher than these baseline values, and the PS-induced increase in CORT levels was not influenced significantly by prior binge drinking or repeated PS. In contrast, the withdrawal-induced increase in CORT levels was higher in binge vs control males and in control vs binge females. Depicted are mean ± SEM for n=15/group/sex except control males (n=7) due to a technical difficulty with that assay. *p<0.05, **p<0.01 vs respective PS1 and PS4.