Figure 1.

Effect of acute restraint stress on plasma corticosterone and on genes participating in secretion of adrenocorticotropic hormone in the pituitary of specific pathogen-free (SPF) and germ-free (GF) mice. CTRL, unstressed mice; STRESS, mice exposed to restraint stress for 2 h; Crhr1, corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor type 1; Pomc, pro-opiomelanocortin; Gr, glucocorticoid receptor; Fkbp5, co-chaperone FK506 binding protein 5. Data are shown as mean ± SEM. A main effect of stress has been identified by placing a dashed horizontal line with an asterisk (^***p < 0.001) above the bars for the stress-exposed groups, whereas a main effect of microbiota by placing a dashed horizontal line with a hash sign (^###p < 0.001, ^#p < 0.05) above the bars for the SPF groups. No interaction effects between stress and microbiota were observed in any of the analyses.