Activity-Based Anorexia in the Rat

Anorexia nervosa is a life-threatening psychiatric disorder characterized by unrelenting self-starvation, severe weight loss, and hyperactivity. Limited treatment efficacy and high rates of mortality provide strong justification for using animal models to study the biological mechanisms that promote the development and maintenance of these maladaptive behaviors. Activity-based anorexia is an animal model that combines restricted access to food with unlimited access to a running wheel. This programmed food restriction promotes hyperactivity that results in dramatic weight loss and increasingly greater levels of hyperactivity, thereby resembling a maladaptive behavioral pattern similar to some individuals with anorexia nervosa. This chapter describes the methodology for inducing activity-based anorexia in Sprague-Dawley rats, with a particular emphasis on adolescent female rats, given the predominately age- and sex-specific onset of anorexia nervosa in adolescent girls.