Adult female sprague dawley rats

Adult female Sprague-Dawley rats (Envigo, Frederick, MD, USA) (total n=48), aged approximately 65-70 days at the start of the experiment, were housed individually in polycarbonate cages with hardwood bedding. Rats were housed in temperature-controlled conditions (20-24°C) with a 12 h standard light-dark cycle (lights on at 0700). Rats had free access to water in the home cage, and were fed 17 g of food daily. Experiments were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee for RTI, and complied with the ARRIVE guidelines. All research was conducted as humanely as possible, and followed the principles of laboratory animal care [48 ].

Adult male and female C57BL/6 mice aged 8–10 weeks were obtained from the Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, ME), and adult female Sprague-Dawley rats (10–12 weeks old) were obtained from Envigo (Indianapolis, IN). The rodents were allowed at least two weeks to acclimate to the animal facilities before they were used for the experiments, and were housed in a room under a 12 h:12 h light-dark cycle (lights on from 0600 to 1800) and temperature-controlled (22 ± 1°C) conditions for the duration of the study. The animals were allowed ad libitum access to food (Harlan-Teklad LM485 chow, Madison, WI) and water prior to experiment onset.