Fig. 1
From: Optimized animal model to mimic the reality of stress-induced depression in the clinic
Scheme of experimental design. During the early post-natal phase (PNDs 1–14), pups in MD and MD + CUS group received maternal deprivation (MD). At 10th weeks, chronic unpredictable stress (CUS) procedure began. At the end of 14th weeks, depression-like and sub depression-like rats, defined by the operational cutoff of behavioral test readouts, were randomly grouped into escitalopram treatment and saline. The sucrose preference test was carried out every week from 9th to 18th weeks. Forced swimming test was performed before 1 week and at the end of the CUS procedure as well as at the end of antidepressant treatment. CUS was still exposed during antidepressant treatment in order to maintain the depressive-like behavior