“…The neurotoxic effects are evidenced by long-term depletions in striatal dopamine (DA) and serotonin (5-HT) concentrations, and their uptake sites (Friedman et al, 1998;Ricaurte et al, 1982;Wagner et al, 1980), decreases in tryptophan and tyrosine hydroxylase activity (Bakhit et al, 1981), and cell loss (Deng et al, 2007;Sonsalla et al, 1996;Thiriet et al, 2005;Yu et al, 2004;Zhu et al, 2006). In addition to the hypotheses of oxidative stress and apoptosis as mechanisms of METH-induced neurotoxicity (for review, see Davidson et al, 2001;Kita et al, 2003;Quinton and Yamamoto, 2006), increases in the extracellular concentrations of glutamate (GLU) have been also suggested to play an important role (Abekawa et al, 1994;Nash and Yamamoto, 1992;Sonsalla et al, 1989;Stephans and Yamamoto, 1994).…”