Septal arginine vasopressin (AVP) receptor regulation in rats depleted of septal AVP following long-term castration

摘要: Arginine vasopressin (AVP) causes severe motor disturbances, including barrel rotations and myotonic/myoclonic convulsions, following repeated injections into either a lateral cerebral ventricle or the ventral septal area (VSA) of rat brain. Because AVP content has been shown to be virtually eliminated long- term castration, because removal receptor ligand typically results in upregulation behavioral supersensitivity ligand, we tested hypothesis that long-term castrated rats may supersensitive actions caused by centrally injected have upregulated receptors. In these experiments, adult male Wistar were used 5 months after castration or, as controls, sham castration. The effectiveness eliminating VSA was indicated observation priming hypertonic saline stimulus (known induce central release sensitize brain) sensitized brains control but not subsequent intracerbroventricular injection AVP. AVP, well characteristics (number affinity), AVP-stimulated phosphoinositide (PI) hydrolysis then investigated rats. Motor disturbances induced first second greater than controls.