Chronic psychological stress alters epithelial cell turn-over in rat ileum

Dysregulated epithelial cell kinetics associated with mucosal barrier dysfunction may be involved in certain intestinal disorders. We previously showed that chronic psychological stress, in the form of repetitive sessions of water avoidance stress (WAS), has a major detrimental impact on ileal barrier function. We hypothesized that these changes were related to a disturbance in enterocyte kinetics. Rats were submitted to WAS (1 h/day) for 5 or …