Relationship between the stress of hyper-gravity and food intake and growth rate in mouse.

ABSTRACT

A new method was introduced to assess the effects of hyper-gravity on secretion of corticosterone, one of the major stress hormone, in mouse. The hormone was extracted from feces of the animal and measured by means of ELISA. The amount of corticosterone was high at the beginning of breeding under the hyper-gravity, 3 G. It decreased down to the level of the ground control within 2 weeks. Increases both in the growth rate of the body weight and the food intake were closely related to the decrease in the amount of corticosterone. It is likely that hyper-gravity affects the growth rate via internal secretion.