Fig. 3: Chronic, but not acute, social defeat stress elevates meningeal neutrophils; prolonged elevation of meningeal neutrophils relative to blood in recovery. | Nature Communications

Fig. 3: Chronic, but not acute, social defeat stress elevates meningeal neutrophils; prolonged elevation of meningeal neutrophils relative to blood in recovery.

From: Chronic social defeat stress induces meningeal neutrophilia via type I interferon signaling in male mice

Fig. 3

a Left: Schematic of acute vs chronic stress study; red arrows indicate time points in days at which mice were killed and tissue was harvested. Right: There was a main effect of the number of encounters for meningeal neutrophils (*P = 0.030, F(5,48) = 2.7), but only the CSD day-14 group showed a significant increase by post hoc analysis. In contrast, there was a significant increase in blood neutrophils overall (****P < 0.0001, F(5,48) = 10.5) and at each time point when compared to HC (subscript indicates days of defeat: nHC = 8, n1 = 7; n2 = 7; n4 = 9; n8 = 4; n14 = 10. N = 2 experiments). Results for other cell types are shown in Fig. S8A. b Left: Schematic of post-CSD recovery study; red arrows indicate time points in hours (blue ticks) or days (black ticks) at which mice were killed and tissue was harvested. Gray shading indicates shared HC and CSD animals with (a), as experiments were done contemporaneously. Right: There was a main effect of time post-CSD for meningeal neutrophils (***P = 0.0001, F(6,39) = 6.1); 16 and 24 h post-CSD, meningeal neutrophils were still significantly elevated relative to HC. In contrast, blood neutrophil levels showed an effect of time (****P < 0.0001, F(6,40) = 11.4) and remained significantly elevated for up to 4 h post-CSD, then recovered to HC-like levels thereafter (subscript indicates time post-CSD: n4h = 3, n8h = 5; n16h = 4; n1d = 4; n7d = 4. N = 1 experiment). See Tables S5–S8 for post-hoc statistics. Data points represent individual mice. All statistical tests were run as 1-way ANOVAs. Significance levels shown are from post-hoc testing, with adjustment for multiple comparisons. Results for other cell types are shown in Fig. S8B. All defeated groups are shown in red; open bars indicate fewer defeat encounters than the standard CSD paradigm, shaded bars indicate animals that underwent the complete CSD paradigm and were given time to recover. CSD = chronic social defeat stress, HC = home cage. Data shown as mean ± SEM. *p < 0.05, ****p < 0.0001. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. Schematics created in BioRender. Kigar, S. (2025) https://BioRender.com/djwvueb.

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