Adult male 22-24 g C57BL/6J mice were purchased from the Vital River Laboratory Animal Technology Co., Ltd. Mice were randomly divided into four groups, the control group (CON group, n = 8), diabetes mellitus group (DM group, n = 8), DM + sodium hydrosulfide (DM + 5.6 mg/kg NaHS, n = 8) group, and CON + sodium hydrosulfide (CON + 5.6 mg/kg NaHS, n = 8) group. In this experiment, mice have received daily intraperitoneally injection of NaHS during the last 4 weeks. Then, all mice were tested by the open field test (OFT), elevated plus maze test (EPM test), forced swimming test (FST), and tail suspension test (TST).

The specific-pathogen free (SPF) male C57BL/6 mice (8-week-old, SCXK (Beijing) 2016-0006) were purchased from Beijing Vital River Laboratory Animal Technology Limited Company. A total of 48 mice were randomly assigned to 4 groups (n = 12): a control group (no stress + physiological saline), a CUMS group (CUMS + physiological saline), a Xiaoyaosan group (CUMS + Xiaoyaosan treatment) and a fluoxetine group (CUMS + fluoxetine treatment).

Male C57BL/6J mice (aged 7-8 weeks) and retired male CD-1 mice (aged 16-20 weeks) were obtained from the Experimental Animal Centre of Chongqing Medical University (Chongqing, China). The experimental animals were housed in cages under a 12 h light/12 h dark cycle (lights on at 8:00 a.m.), 60 ± 5% humidity, and a temperature of 23 ± 1 with access to water and food freely. All experimental procedures were conducted in accordance with the Ethics Committee of Chongqing Medical University. EDA was purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, USA) and was dissolved in Vehicle (NaCl, 0.9%) at a dosage of 10 mg/kg. EX527 (a Sirt1 inhibitor) and ML385 (a Nrf2 inhibitor) were obtained from MedChemExpress (New Jersey, USA).