fluvoxamine and Brain-Injuries

The development of novel serotonin agents has led to an increased use of these medications throughout medical practice. An understanding of the basic pharmacological function of these agents is key to understanding their usefulness. Among persons with brain injury, serotonin agents have been used for the treatment of depression, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorders, agitation, sleep disorders, and motor dysfunction.. This article will review the mechanisms, efficacy, and side effects of serotonin agents with a focus on persons with brain injury.

Topics: Brain Injuries; Citalopram; Clinical Trials as Topic; Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; Drug Administration Schedule; Female; Fluoxetine; Fluvoxamine; Follow-Up Studies; Humans; Injury Severity Score; Male; Paroxetine; Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors; Sertraline; Treatment Outcome

Parkinson's disease (PD) patients often suffer from visuospatial deficits, which have been considered a disruption of the representation of external space. The lateralised choice reaction time (CRT) task is an operant task for rodents in which similar deficits can be assessed. It has been demonstrated that specific parameters in this task is disrupted after unilateral injections of 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA), which have been associated with the dopamine (DA) depletion that inevitably follows this type of lesion. However, studies have demonstrated that this type of lesion also affects the serotonergic (5HT) and noradrenergic (NA) systems. However, the impact of these systems on parameters in the CRT task had not yet been investigated. To this end, rats were pretrained on the CRT task before receiving selective lesions of the DAergic system, either alone or in combination with depletion of the NA or 5HT system. All rats with a 6-OHDA lesion displayed a gradual decline in the selection, initiation and execution of lateralised movements compared to sham-lesion controls on the side contralateral to the lesion. They also displayed a reduced number of useable trials as well as an increased number of procedural errors. Interestingly, the group with an additional noradrenergic lesion was significantly slower in reacting to lateralised stimuli throughout the testing period compared to the other two groups with a 6-OHDA lesion. There was however no difference between the three different lesion groups in the other parameters assessed in the task. These data confirm previous findings demonstrating that the majority of the parameters assessed in the lateralised CRT task are strongly dependent on DA. However, this study has also shown that the NAergic system may play an important role in contributing to the attentive performance influencing the capacity to react to the presented lateralised stimuli.

Topics: Adrenergic Uptake Inhibitors; Animals; Brain Injuries; Cell Count; Desipramine; Dopamine; Dopamine beta-Hydroxylase; Female; Fluvoxamine; Functional Laterality; Movement; Nerve Fibers; Norepinephrine; Oxidopamine; Rats; Reaction Time; Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors; Serotonin; Serotonin Plasma Membrane Transport Proteins; Substantia Nigra; Sympatholytics; Tyrosine 3-Monooxygenase