Objective To study the effect of hypothalamus pituitary adrenal(HPA) axis disorder on the hippocampal formation in rats with anxious depression and to explore its potential pathogenesis. Methods Rats were randomly divided into control group, vehicle group, anxiety group, depression group and anxious depression group with 12 rats in each group. Anxious depression rats were intervened by chronic restraint stress combined with corticosterone injection for continuous 21 d. Then, elevated plus maze (EPM), open field test (OFT), forced swimming test(FST)were used to evaluate the anxious and depressi...