Cadmium Increases the Sensitivity of Adolescent Female Mice to Nicotine-Related Behavioral Deficits

Figure 6

(a, b) The average distance travelled in meters in elevated plus maze. (a) The open arm distance (checked bars) and closed arm distance (plain bars) for the treatment groups were compared versus the control. Nicotine treated female mice showed a significance in the distance covered in the open arm when compared with the control (). In furtherance, cadmium treated mice recorded a decrease in total exploration distance when compared with the nicotine treated group (). Anxiety linked behaviors were observed in the nicotine treatment as they explored the closed arm more than the open arm. Also, the cadmium and nicotine-cadmium treated groups showed a significant decline in exploration time and explored the closed arm more than the open arm (statistical significance: ). (b) Track plots of the mice during the 4 minutes exploration in EPM using Any-Maze software to demonstrate the open and closed arm distances. (c and d) Elevated plus maze open/closed arm entries and duration. (c) Close arm (CAD::stripes) and open arm (OAD::plain) durations for the treatment groups versus the control. Increased CAD was observed in the nicotine, cadmium, and nicotine-cadmium treatment group (), thus depicting increased anxiety in these animals. (d) Bar chart showing the frequency of close arm (CAE) and open arm (OAE) entries for the treatment groups and control. A significant difference () was observed between the CAE and OAE in the nicotine and cadmium treated groups (). No significance was seen when the OAE and CAE were compared for the combined nicotine-cadmium treatment group (statistical significance: ).

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