Inbreeding considerations in a REM sleep model for rat swimming activity

Over the past few years, our laboratory group has elaborated a repeated measures rat swimming test. It provides an animal base for showing that the REM sleep mechanism is important to both emotional responsiveness and environmental adaptations. All of that work has been done with Sprague-Dawley rats obtained from a local supplier. Work done with two European rat stocks (by researchers in France and The Netherlands) shows general agreement with our own. In this presentation, we directly compare rats derived from an English vendor's Sprague-Dawley stock with the U.S. based Sprague-Dawley stock which we have been using. We also make strain comparisons via the F344 and the Long Evans strains. Although the literature has numerous examples of swimming test differences between inbred and wild rat stocks, strain difference effects have not been reported. We report that there are significant differences attributable to inbred strain but not to vendor on this measure.