BDNF regulation in the rat dorsal vagal complex during stress-induced anorexia

The dorsal vagal complex (DVC) is the satiety reflex-integrating center of adult mammals. Immobilization stress (IS) is known to elicit anorexia and to up-regulate BDNF expression in adult rat forebrain; intra-DVC delivery of BDNF was shown to elicit anorexia. Therefore, we addressed here whether IS would increase BDNF signaling in rat DVC by using PCR and western-blot on microdissected tissue extracts. Significant variations of BDNF expression in DVC after IS include exon V mRNA increase at 3 h, decreases of both protein and exon III mRNA at 24 h, and exon I mRNA decrease at 72 h. At the receptor level, IS elicited a highly significant induction of both full-length and truncated-1 TrkB mRNAs at 24 h after IS. In vivo recruitment of BDNF signaling in DVC during stress thus differs from hypothalamus, the relevance of which to anorexia is discussed.