Psychopharmacology
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study Clinical Trial
Changes in food reward following smoking cessation: a pharmacogenetic investigation.
Despite the high prevalence and public health significance of weight gain following smoking cessation, little is known about the underlying bio-behavioral mechanisms or effective therapies. ⋯ These results provide new evidence that the increase in body weight that occurs following smoking cessation is related to increases in food reward, and that food reward is partly determined by genetic factors. Bupropion's efficacy in attenuating abstinence-induced weight gain may be attributable, in part, to decreasing food reward.
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Sensorimotor gating disruption is one of many neurocognitive deficits seen in schizophrenia. Disorganized thought is one of the cardinal symptoms associated with sensorimotor gating. In an attempt to model sensorimotor gating deficits in rats relevant to the neurodevelopmental hypothesis for schizophrenia, we have used prenatal injections of the antimitotic drug, cytosine arabinoside (Ara-C) to subtly perturb the development of the rat CNS and disrupt sensorimotor gating. ⋯ The results provide evidence to suggest that late embryonic exposure to Ara-C disrupts the circuitry involved in mediating PPI. While the dopamine agonist apomorphine caused a significant disruption in the control rats it did not further disrupt the existing deficit in the Ara-C treated rats. These data provide evidence to support the contention that modest neurodevelopmental insults can significantly affect sensorimotor gating processes in an adult onset dependent manner.
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3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and methamphetamine (METH) are illicit drugs that are increasingly used in combination. The acute and long-term effects of MDMA/METH combinations are largely uncharacterised. ⋯ These results suggest that MDMA and METH in combination may have greater adverse acute effects (head-weaving, body temperature) and long-term effects (decreased social interaction, increased emergence anxiety, dopamine depletion) than equivalent doses of either drug alone.
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3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, ecstasy) administration to rats produces acute hyperthermia and long-term neurotoxic damage to 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin, 5-HT) neurones. ⋯ MDMA administration to rats housed at 30 degrees C produces a more severe hyperthermic response than that seen in rats housed at 19 degrees C. A prior neurotoxic dose enhances the response further in animals housed at 30 degrees C. Binge dosing produces a higher final peak response than a similar non-divided dose. This effect is more marked in animals housed at high room temperature. These data may have implications for recreational users of MDMA in hot environments, particularly those who may have damaged serotoninergic neurones because of prior heavy or frequent use of the drug.
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Comparative Study
Effects of three hypnotics on the sleep-wakefulness cycle in sleep-disturbed rats.
New sleep disturbance model in rats is useful for estimating the characteristics of some hypnotics. ⋯ The present insomnia model can be used as a sleep disturbance model for testing not only the sleep-inducing effects but also the sleep-maintaining effects including non-REM sleep and REM sleep of hypnotics.