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. 2022 Jan 27;12:1447. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-05306-8

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© The Author(s) 2022

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Female encounters increase serum cytokine levels, which are abolished by VTA inactivation. (A) A male mouse was subjected to a FE for 2 h, 4 h or 4 days, and a blood sample was collected. (B) Serum concentrations of four cytokines after a 2-h FE (Control, n = 10 mice; 2-h FE, n = 10 mice). Each thin dot represents one mouse. *P < 0.05. (C) Same as B but for a 4-h FE (Control, n = 8 mice; 4-h FE, n = 8 mice). (D) Same as B but for a 4-day FE (n = 7–10 mice). (E) (Left) A male mouse freely interacted with the other male mouse for 2 h, termed a male encounter (ME), and blood sample was collected. (Right) Serum IL-2 concentrations after a 2-h ME (Control, n = 8 mice; ME, n = 8 mice). (F) (Top) To inhibit neuronal activity in the VTA, muscimol and baclofen were locally injected into the VTA of male mice subjected to a 2-h FE. (Bottom) Changes in serum IL-2 concentrations after inhibition of the VTA (n = 6–7 mice). *P < 0.05.