The Pharmacologic Action of Indole Compounds*

Cardiovascular Pharmacology of the Domestic Fowl

“…For the chicken, the routes which have been employed are intramuscular injection (9-15, 19, 28, 31, 32, 35, 41, 51, 55, 76, 99), intravenous injection (2,27,34,41,45,49,61,62,66,68,69,72,82,105), intraperitoneal injection (2,36), subcutaneous injection (75), cloacal injection (74), oral administration (49) and by inhalation (28,29,41,44,52), the latter route being used only for ether. Intravenous routes have been condemned for most of the anesthetic agents mainly because the anesthetic dose closely approaches the lethal dose (20,26,28,49,105).…”

“…Serotonin is known to release histamine in other animal species and this apparently applies also to the domestic fowl since the injection of serotonin results in the appearance of a histamine like substance in its urine (13). Aside from serotonin, a number of other struc turally related indolealkylamines have also been studied on chicken blood pressure (9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)61). The structural formulae of the more important ones are represented in figure 6.…”

“…Dimethylation of the terminal nitrogen as in the tertiary amines, dimethyltryptamine, psilocin and bufotenine, leads to a prolongation of the duration of pressor activity since it renders the compounds less susceptible to inactivation by mono amine oxidase (14). In addition to the compounds represented in figure 6, other indole derivatives which have been tested on chicken blood pressure are cinobufotenine, gramine and melatonin (15,61). The latter two compounds are usually pressor while responses to cinobufotenine have been reported to be inconsistent.…”