Depression is currently among the top five leading causes of the global burden of disease. Chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) is currently the most commonly used, reliable, and effective rodent model of depression. However, for unclear reasons, this protocol is often difficult to reproduce in different laboratories. We performed a meta-analysis of studies that used the CUMS paradigm to evaluate depressive-like behavior in rodents. We sought to identify strain-dependent susceptibility to stress based on the development of one of the main end points of the model, “anhedonia.” The meta-analysis indicated that the CUMS protocol is a robust animal model of depression and is strongly associated with anhedonic behavior in rodents. However, high heterogeneity was found in the single subgroup analysis, which was attributable to modification of the CUMS and sucrose preference protocols. This may explain difficulties in reproducing stress protocols by different research groups.

抑郁症目前是全球疾病负担的前五位主要原因。慢性不可预测的轻度应激（CUMS）是目前最常用，可靠且有效的抑郁症啮齿动物模型。但是，由于不清楚的原因，该协议通常很难在不同的实验室中复制。我们进行了一项研究的荟萃分析，该研究使用CUMS范式评估啮齿类动物的抑郁样行为。我们试图基于模型“ anhedonia”的主要终点之一的发展来确定应变对压力的敏感性。荟萃分析表明，CUMS协议是一种强大的抑郁动物模型，与啮齿动物的性行为缺乏密切相关。但是，在单个亚组分析中发现了高度异质性，这归因于CUMS和蔗糖偏爱方案的修改。这可能解释了不同研究小组在重现压力规约方面的困难。