Eric Krause
Georgia State University, GA·Neuroscience
Stress shows up in the body as well as the mind. It affects blood pressure, appetite, body weight and heart health.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Physiology
Pharmacology
- Topics
stress physiology
HPA axis
corticotropin-releasing hormone
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Feb 2031
What they work on
- Determine how HPA stress-axis activity reduces weight-loss quality, including muscle loss, during treatment with GLP-1 receptor agonists such as semaglutide, using a CRF-neutralizing antibody (Anti-CRF) in mice.
- Test whether suppressing HPA axis activity with Anti-CRF blunts overeating and weight regain after GLP-1 receptor agonist treatment stops.
- Use intravital imaging to test whether chronic social defeat stress dulls responses of oxytocin-receptor nodose ganglion neurons to stretch of the blood vessels and gut.
- Delete the stretch sensor Piezo2 from oxytocin-receptor nodose neurons, and chemogenetically stimulate these neurons during social stress, to test effects on hypertension, overeating and anxiety-like behavior.
- Use Cre-LoxP mice and in vivo optogenetics to test whether exciting or inhibiting neurons expressing angiotensin receptors AT1R, AT2R or MasR reduces or worsens stress responses.
- Determine how a stress-induced disease model changes AT1R, AT2R and MasR neurons, and test whether optogenetic, genetic or pharmacological manipulation of them reverses stress-induced pathophysiology.
More about the research
Research across the lab's projects examines how the brain's stress systems and the nerves that sense the heart and gut shape cardiovascular and metabolic disease. The projects use genetically engineered mice and tools that switch specific neurons on or off. They ask how stress circuits drive high blood pressure and weight gain, and whether calming those circuits can protect health or improve weight-loss drugs.
Why it matters
Obesity, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, the leading U.S. cause of death, are all worsened by stress. This work could improve GLP-1 drugs like semaglutide by preserving muscle and preventing weight regain. It could also identify nerve and brain targets for treating stress-linked hypertension, overeating and anxiety, including in socially disadvantaged populations.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Targeting stress axes to enhance the efficacy of weight loss therapeutics
NIH · Jun 2026 – Feb 2031
Blunted mechanosensation of the heart and gut as a mediator of pathogenesis conferred by chronic social subjugation
NIH · Jan 2025 – Nov 2029
Interrogating stress-relieving neural circuits to alleviate cardiovascular disease
NIH · Feb 2020 – Dec 2026
Closest labs
Jamie Maguire
Tufts University, MA·Neuroscience
Test whether activity in the pathway from stress-hormone CRH neurons in the hypothalamus to the brainstem's nucleus of the solitary tract is increased in chronically epileptic mice at risk of SUDEP.
Glenn M Toney
Texas A&M University-College Station, TX·Neuroscience
Test whether raising the brain's own opioids in the PVH of normal mice reproduces the heightened opioid-induced respiratory depression seen in mice exposed to chronic intermittent hypercapnic hypoxia, a model of sleep apnea.
Cynthia Munro
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Neuroscience
Determine how cortisol response to acute stress, induced with the Trier Social Stress Test and measured in saliva, relates to memory and executive-function performance after stress in people with mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease.
The school
Georgia State University: 9 labs on PI Pages, $241M a year on research, 300 research doctorates a year.
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