Abstract
People are taken ill often mentally and physically, when they are unable to adapt themselves to the new environment. SART (Specific alternation of rhythm in temperature)-stressed animals show a similar condition to that of psychosomatic disorders in human. Major pathological symptoms observed in SART-stressed animals are abnormalities in ECG, EEG, GSR, and emotional behavior (over sensitiveness, anxiety, depression), increased peristaltic movement, autonomic disorder-like symptoms, continuous hypotension, orthostatic hypotension, chronic hyperalgesia, changes in the levels of chemical mediators in the brain, small intestine and blood, and so on. These symptoms resulted primarily from hyperactivity of the parasympathetic nervous system, and little involvement of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical and sympathetic nervous systems. In this review, those symptoms and effective drugs on them are shown. Thus SART-stressed animals show the similar pathological condition to those of patients with irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and various other psychosomatic disorders, and so the SART-stressed animal is thought to be a useful tool which acts as go-between for basic and clinical researches on chronic stress diseases and stress-induced psychosomatic disorders.
