Animal models for the study of antidepressant activity

Timosaponin derivative YY-23 acts as a non-competitive NMDA receptor antagonist and exerts a rapid antidepressant-like effect in mice

“…An animal model induced by CMS was developed and confirmed to be the most similar to the symptoms of clinical depression due to the construct validity, face validity and predictive validity [28,44,45] . In the present study, we investigated the effects of YY-23 and FLX on depressive behavior caused by CMS stressors, including alterations in the day/night cycle, rotated or soiled cages, isolated housing and food/water deprivation.…”

Effects of Long-term Acetyl-L-carnitine Administration in Rats I. Increased Dopamine Output in Mesocorticolimbic Areas and Protection toward Acute Stress Exposure

“…After chronic exposure to unavoidable stress 5-HT output decreases in the mPFC and NAcS (Mangiavacchi et al 2001). Some of these stress procedures have been validated as models of depression, as the behavioral and neurochemical deficit that they induce reproduces depressive symptoms (face validity), and is reverted by the administration of antidepressant compounds (predictive validity) (Willner 1997;Gambarana et al 2001). Thus, rats subjected to the chronic mild stress (CMS) model, a chronic sequential exposure to a variety of mild stressors, show decreased drinking of a sweetened solution, a condition equated to anhedonia (Willner 1997).…”

The protective effect of Hypericum connatum on stress-induced escape deficit in rat is related to its flavonoid content

“…Hypericum perforatum extracts are active in a large number of behavioural and biochemical models which are indicative of antidepressant activity (Okpanyi and Weischer 1987;Butterweck et al 1997;Chatterjee et al 1998a;De Vry et al 1999;Gambarana et al 1999). Intriguingly, H. perforatum extract has an antidepressant-like activity after acute and repeated administration (Gambarana et al 1999), at variance with the results obtained with standard antidepressant drugs that are ineffective after a single administration (Gambarana et al 2001a;Grappi et al 2003;Rauggi et al 2005). On one hand, the mechanisms of H. perforatum central actions are still debated.…”

“…To this end, we investigated the property of H. connatum extract to prevent in rats the development of consequences of unavoidable stress exposure using the acute escape deficit (ED) test (Gambarana et al 2001a). The ED test, that we extensively characterized (Gambarana et al 1995(Gambarana et al , 1999(Gambarana et al , 2001aGrappi et al 2003;Rauggi et al 2005), is derived from the learned helplessness model (Overmier and Seligman 1967); it is easy to perform, has high reproducibility and yield (about 90-95% of the rats exposed to the acute unavoidable stress develop the escape deficit) and we have shown that it is endowed with good predictive validity of putative antidepressant-like activity (Gambarana et al 2001a).…”

“…The ED test, that we extensively characterized (Gambarana et al 1995(Gambarana et al , 1999(Gambarana et al , 2001aGrappi et al 2003;Rauggi et al 2005), is derived from the learned helplessness model (Overmier and Seligman 1967); it is easy to perform, has high reproducibility and yield (about 90-95% of the rats exposed to the acute unavoidable stress develop the escape deficit) and we have shown that it is endowed with good predictive validity of putative antidepressant-like activity (Gambarana et al 2001a). The effects of H. connatum were compared with the effects of H. perforatum or fluoxetine after single or repeated treatment, respectively, as standard antidepressants belonging to different classes are inactive after a single administration in the ED test (Gambarana et al 1995(Gambarana et al , 2001aGrappi et al 2003;Rauggi et al 2005), similar to what observed in other experimental tests and in the clinical setting. Since the extract showed a protective effect, a second set of experiments was performed to identify the active components with subsequent fractionation and purification.…”