Tamoxifen Influences on Behavior and Mood in Female Rats

Date
2020
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TAMOXIFEN AND BEHAVIOR
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only until 2021-01-01, afterwards Open Access.
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Abstract
Tamoxifen is a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM) used in the treatment of hormone receptor-positive breast cancer in pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of long-term tamoxifen treatment on anxiety and depressive behaviors in female rats. Female rats were randomly assigned to receive tamoxifen treatment through medicated food pellets or unmedicated normal rat chow for 10-13 weeks. It was hypothesized that tamoxifen rats would exhibit increased anxiety and depressive behaviors in the elevated plus maze and open field test as a result of the decrease in estrogen activity in the brain because of tamoxifen treatment. Increased anxiety behavior in the elevated plus maze would be associated with increased time spent in the enclosed arms of the maze and increased entries into the enclosed arms versus the open arms. In the open field test increased anxiety behavior would be associated with a lower number of central crossings of the open field and increased time spent on the outer parts of the open field near the walls and corners. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the behavioral data from the study was unavailable for analysis at this time. Analysis of trends in weight data for rats in the study found that tamoxifen treatment was significantly associated with differences in weight change compared to control rats during the study. Tamoxifen treatment was associated with an initial decrease in body weight and a lower overall end weight relative to control rats. Future studies should continue the work of this study by analyzing the behavioral data of this study and designing other experiments to also examine cognitive effects associated with long-term tamoxifen treatment. Future immunocytochemistry analysis of hippocampal circuitry is also important in understanding the behavioral and cognitive effects of long-term tamoxifen treatment.
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