Abstract. We calculate electric susceptibility of a laser-dressed atomic medium. The model adopted in this work refers to the experiment with cold 85 Rb atoms, where the states F′ = 1, 2, 3 of the hyperfine manifold 5P 3/2 (F′) are strongly coupled with the ground state 5S 1/2 (F = 2), and the coupling is probed by a weak probing field from the other ground-state component 5S 1/2 (F = 3). We present a five-level model in which the states F = 2, 3 and F′ = 1, 2, 3 are taken into account, while the noncoupled state F′ = 4 is neglected. The model is used as a starting point to reproduce spectral features observed in the absorption of probe light passing through a cold sample of 85 Rb atoms in a magneto-optical trap. Basing on numerical solutions of this model, we have also studied in detail the impact on the probe spectra from the presence of the state F′ = 1 to which probing is forbidden by electric-dipole transition, but coupling is allowed [see, e.g., Proc. of SPIE 8770 (2013)