A53T (SNCA) and wild type (WT) littermate mice were evaluated for motor function (rotarod and stride length) and anxiety (elevated plus maze and open field) every 2 weeks.
However, our results indicated that the novel environment-induced defecation response, a common method used to evaluate colorectal function, was not a useful test to measure exacerbation of GI dysfunction, most likely because of the reported reduced level of anxiety in A53T mice.
To test this, we used 3-, 5-, and 7-month-old A53T mice to examine anxiety-like behavior, locomotion, and expression of inflammation and astrogliosis markers in the Hipp and mCtx.