Browsing by Subject "etanoli"

Inhibitory GABAergic neurotransmission seems to play a central role in the effects of ethanol on the central nervous system. However, the exact mechanism of ethanol action as well as the role of the GABAA subunits in this mechanism remains unclear. The imidazobenzodiazepine Ro 15-4513 acts as a partial inverse agonist of the GABAA receptors by binding to their benzodiazepine sites which contain a γ2 subunit. In addition, ethanol and Ro 15-4513 seem to bind in a competitive manner and with high affinity to δ subunit-containing extrasynaptic GABAA receptors that mediate tonic inhibition. There exists conflicting evidence about the role of the δ subunit in the mechanism of antialcohol effects of Ro 15-4513. Clinical evidence of the efficacy of γ-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) in suppressing alcohol withdrawal syndrome has been shown, even though only little preclinical research has been done on this subject. GHB has agonistic effect on the GABAB receptors and on the putative GHB receptors. GHB seems to share a very similar pharmacological profile with ethanol and there is also some proof of their synergistic effects. However, the exact mechanism of ethanol consumption suppressing action of GHB is not exactly known. The aim of this study was to determine the role of the γ2 and δ subunits in the effects of Ro 15-4513 (0, 3 mg/kg) on voluntary ethanol drinking and on the motor coordination suppression by ethanol (1.5 g/kg). In addition the effects of nonselective benzodiazepine flurazepam (0, 6 mg/kg) and GHB (0, 100, 150 mg/kg) on ethanol drinking and the effects of GHB on motor coordination were examined. The rotarod method (∅ 6 cm, fixed speed 6 r.p.m.) was chosen to determine the motor coordination. The drinking-in-the-dark (DID) method was applied to study the drinking effects. In this method the water bottle in the home cage of each mouse was replaced with an ethanol dilution (20 % v/v) for a certain time in the beginning of the dark phase of the light/dark cycle. A knock in mouse line γ2I77-lox with a point mutation in the γ2 subunit gene was used in the experiments. The mutation decreases the affinity of the receptor for certain benzodiazepine structures like that of Ro 15-4513 in the brain. The C57BL/6J mouse line was used as control. Both Ro 15-4513 (3 mg/kg) and GHB (150 mg/kg) significantly reduced ethanol drinking. The GHB dose of 100 mg/kg failed to reach significance probably due to the relatively long drinking time (1 h) used in the experiment in comparison to the short half-life of this drug. Flurazepam (6 mg/kg) significantly enhanced ethanol drinking which as expected was not affected by the mutation of the γ2I77-lox mouse line. Ro 15-4513 (3 mg/kg) failed to reduce the ethanol-induced suppression of motor coordination probably due to a too low dose. The GHB rotarod experiments suggest that the GHB (150 mg/kg) ethanol drinking suppressing effect may have been partly caused by its sedative effects. There was no significant difference between the used mouse lines in the effects of Ro 15-4513. This would suggest that the γ2 subunit does not play a significant role in the effects of Ro 15-4513. However, in order to draw a final conclusion more experiments must be done with the γ2I77-lox as well as with the δ subunit knockout mouse line, which we were unfortunately not able to include in this study as originally planned.