Journal
BEHAVIOURAL BRAIN RESEARCH
Volume 292, Issue -, Pages 316-322Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2015.06.022
Keywords
Innate anxiety; Anxiety-like behaviors; Riluzole; Diazepam; Anxiolytics
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Funding
- Intramural Research Grant for Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders of NCNP, Japan [24-2]
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [26461730] Funding Source: KAKEN
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In this study, we investigated the anxiogenic-like effects of systemically administered veratrine in rat models of anxiety. In the light/dark test, veratrine (0.6 mg/kg, s.c.) significantly and dose-dependently decreased the time rats spent in and the number of entries into a light box 30 min after administration, suggesting that veratrine increases anxiety-like behaviors. These findings were also supported by results from the elevated-plus maze test and the tail-swing behavior test. In addition, veratrine (0.6 mg/kg, s.c.) significantly increased the plasma concentration of corticosterone, an endogenous biomarker for anxiety, compared to vehicle. On the basis of these results, we conclude that veratrine induces anxiogenic-like behaviors in rats. The anxiogenic-like behaviors induced by veratrine (0.6 mg/kg, s.c.) were completely abolished by co-treatment with the typical benzodiazepine anxiolytic diazepam (1 mg/kg, s.c.), when assessed in the elevated-plus maze test. Similar results were obtained with co-treatment with riluzole (10 mg/kg, p.o.), which directly affects the glutamatergic system and has recently been suggested to have anxiolytic-like effects. In conclusion, this study provides evidence that systemically administered veratrine induces anxiogenic-like behaviors in rats. We propose the veratrine model as a novel pathological animal model to explore possible candidate drugs for anxiolytics. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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