Aim: 

The treatment with antioxidants can improve behaviour and mental state of a chronically stressed organism via preventing stress-related oxidative damages. We assessed whether pre-stress administration of bioflavonoid Quercetin improves behavioural outcome in the animal model.

Methods: 

The chronic stress was induced by electric footshock during 40 min (0.8 mA, 10s per shock, 22-25s intervals between pulses). The stressing was administered once per two days during 2 weeks. The Quercetin (100 mg kg(-1)) was fed daily for 2 weeks before the stress exposure. Four groups of Male Wistar rats 5 months old (n = 9 each one) were used for this experiment. Stressed and Quercitine administrated (SQ) group was exposed to both treatments. Stressed (S) group and Quercitine administrated (Q) group were exposed only to one of the treatments. Control group was intact. We used elevated alley Suok test (Kalueff et al. 2005) on the 4^th day for all the groups. All data were analyzed by nonparametric Mann-Whitney U-test (threshold significance was p = 0.05); results are presented as median (including lower quartile and upper quartile).

Results: 

S group has the number of lookdown reactions lower (2 (2 and 4)) than in control group (8 (3 and 13)). The parameter was recovered in the SQ group (6 (4 and 9)) compared to the S group. In the SQ and Q groups the number of lookdown reactions did not significantly differ form the control. Conclusion: The administration of an antioxidant attenuates stress-related inhibition of exploratory activity, but other achieved behavioural data need further analysis.