Concomitant Behavioral, Electrochemical and Electrophysiological Study in Real Time on the Role of CRF and CRF Antagonist(S) in Anxiety and Depression: Possible Association CRF + 5-HT Receptor Antagonists?

Crespi Francesco

doi:10.23937/2469-5866/1510022

Abstract

Corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) is involved in conditions of anxiety and stress: It stimulates the release of adrenocorticotropin hormone (ACTH). Also, catecholamines increase ACTH release, while serotonin (5-HT) increases both ACTH and CRF.

Highlights

Corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) and arginine vasopressin (AVP), both of which are synthesized in the hypothalamus, stimulate the release of adrenocorticotropin hormone (ACTH) from the anterior hypophysis in conditions of stress, anxiety [1,2,3,4]
B) The influence of the selective chemical treatments with compounds involved in the response to stressful stimuli upon monoaminergic activities in rats submitted to stress-anxiety-depression. These studies will permit to verify the setting up of an experimental behavioural-neurochemical in vivo model of stress-anxiety-depression i.e. the concomitance of the electrochemical and electrophysiological outcome following behavioral or pharmacological treatments in naïve versus rats submitted to stress-anxiety-depression would clarify the role of CRF as the putative endogenous responsible of a stress-anxiety-depressive state
This experimental behavioral-neurochemical in vivo model will permit to verify the efficacy of CRF antagonists upon behavioral responses and electrochemical-electrophysiological parameters, data that will underline the efficacy of such compounds within the stress-anxiety-depressive state

Summary

Introduction

Corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) and arginine vasopressin (AVP), both of which are synthesized in the hypothalamus, stimulate the release of adrenocorticotropin hormone (ACTH) from the anterior hypophysis in conditions of stress, anxiety [1,2,3,4].in rodents, central catecholamines stimulate ACTH release, effect mediated via secretion of CRH (for a review see [5], while serotonin (5-HT) increases both ACTH and CRF release and facilitates the capacity of AVP to release ACTH in stressful situations [6,7,8,9].Voltammetry and in particular differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) is an electrochemical technique that used in association with treated carbon fiber microelectrodes (μCFE) allows the detection of catecholamines, serotonin and peptides simultaneously in discrete brain regions of anaesthetized as well as conscious freely moving rats [10,11].This methodology can be combined with behavioral models of stress-anxiety-depression such as forced immobilization that mingles emotive and physical stress [12] and for a review see [13], or forced swimming test [14,15] or fear conditioning [16,17].This methodological combination will allow monitoring selective changes of the monoamine neurotransmitters in real time and in the specific cerebral region selected within animals submitted to such aversive conditions. To verify a direct relationship between 5-HT and ACTH systems in discrete brain areas highly involved in several physiological and behavioral activities such as emotion, vigilance, memory, and adaptive responses to stress with the aim to the possible formulation of new strategies of pharmacological treatment(s) of such pathological state(s).

Results

Conclusion