Dental Noise Exposed Mice Display Depressive-Like Phenotypes

Studies have indicated that depressive disorders are observed frequently in dentists,it has been considered that dentists encounter numerous sources of stress including feeling physically or emotionally exhausted,headaches or backaches,coping with difficult or uncooperative patients,heavy workload and financial problems.Consequently,some mental disorders such as anxiety,depression and even suicide may result from these stresses.We noticed that the noises in dental environments are very unpleasant.Noise pollution has been criticized by mankind for decades of years and was historically regarded as a large public concern.The animal modeling studies suggested that stressful noise could produce depressive-like phenotypes in rodent animals.Chronic noise could not only causing hearing loss,but also damage other organs.However,reported study focused on the effects of dental noise per se on depression is limited.We hypothesize that the dental noise may be one of the primary stressors causing depressive disorders in dentists.We treated C57BL/6 mice with programmatically played wide-spectrum dental noise for 8 hours/day at 75±10dB SPL level for 30 days,and then tested the behaviors.After exposure to dental noise,animals displayed the depressive-like phenotypes in behavioral tests.Further analysis of neurogenesis found that hippocampal neurogenesis was inhibited.These deficits were ameliorated by orally administered with antidepressant fluoxetine.Our results illustrated that chronic dental noise exposure could induce depressive-like phenotypes,where neurogenesis impairment may be one of the pathological mechanisms.And it was suggested that dental noise could be one of the primary stressors for the pathogenesis of depressive disorders.Moreover,the dental noise mouse model could be used in further depression studies.