Fig. 3: Free-testosterone contributes to male-specific contextual pain hypersensitivity.
From: A neural circuit for sex-dependent conditioned pain hypersensitivity in mice
a Summarized data of free-testosterone levels in the serum of male naïve mice (control), maleDC mice, and maleSC mice on D2, D4, and D8 after acetic acid injection (n = 5 per group; D2, p = 0.0078; D4, p = 0.0157; D8, p = 0.0716). b Schematic for castration surgery (TX) and experimental procedure in male mice. c Summarized data of free-testosterone levels in the serum of Sham, TX-, vehicle-treated TX-, or testosterone propionate (TP)-treated TX-male mice (n = 7 per group, F3,24 = 22.21, p < 0.0001). d, e PWT and PWL of maleSC mice (PWT: n = 8 for sham group, n = 7 for TX group, n = 5 for TX + Vehicle and TX + TP group, F3,21 = 9.776, p = 0.0003; PWL: n = 5 per group, F3,16 = 5.492, p = 0.0087). f, g Representative traces and quantitative data of action potentials recorded from GlumPOA neurons in sham- and castration maleSC mice (n = 19 cells from 4 mice per group; F1,36 = 4.141, p = 0.0493). h, i PWT and PWL of femaleSC mice (PWT: n = 6 per group, F1,10 = 7.450, p = 0.0212; PWL: n = 5 per group, F1,8 = 4.550, p = 0.0655). j Summarized data of serum free-testosterone levels in female mice (n = 7 per group, p < 0.0001). k Schematic for ovariectomy (OVX) in female mice. l PWT and PWL of OVX female mice (PWT: n = 6 per group, p = 0.1422 for Vehicle, p < 0.0001 for TP; PWL: n = 5 per group, p = 0.1095 for Vehicle, p = 0.0155 for TP). Significance was assessed by two-tailed unpaired Student’s t-test (a, j, l), one-way ANOVA with post hoc Bonferroni’s test between groups (c) and two-way repeated-measures ANOVA with post hoc comparison between groups (d, e, g–i). The data are presented as the mean ± SEMs. * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01, *** P < 0.001; n.s. not significant. See also Supplementary Table 1. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
