Affiliations: Ministry of Health Mental Health Center, Anxiety and
Stress Research Unit, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev, Beer- Sheva, Israel | Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Program, Bronx VA
Medical Center, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Hagit Cohen, Ph.D., Anxiety and
Stress Research Unit, Ministry of Health Mental Health Center, Faculty of
Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 4600, Beer-Sheva
84170 Israel. Tel.: +972 8 6401743; Fax: +972 8 6401742; E-mail:
hagitc@bgu.ac.il
Abstract: Epidemiological studies report higher prevalence rates of
stress-related disorders such as acute stress disorder and post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) in women than in men following exposure to trauma. It is
still not clear whether this greater prevalence in woman reflects a greater
vulnerability to stress-related psychopathology. A number of individual and
trauma-related characteristics have been hypothesized to contribute to these
gender differences in physiological and psychological responses to trauma,
differences in appraisal, interpretation or experience of threat, coping style
or social support. In this context, the use of an animal model for PTSD to
analyze some of these gender-related differences may be of particular utility.
Animal models of PTSD offer the opportunity to distinguish between biological
and socio-cultural factors, which so often enter the discussion about gender
differences in PTSD prevalence. In this review, we present and discuss
sex-differences in behavioral, neurochemical, neurobiological and
pharmacological findings that we have collected from several different animal
studies related to both basal conditions and stress responses. These models
have used different paradigms and have elicited a range of behavioral and
physiological manifestations associated with gender. The overall data presented
demonstrate that male animals are significantly more vulnerable to acute and
chronic stress, whereas females are far more resilient. The stark contradiction
between these findings and contemporary epidemiological data regarding human
subjects is worthy of further study. The examination of these gender-related
differences can deepen our understanding of the risk or the pathophysiology of
stress-related disorders.
