Anti-parkinsonian effects of fluvoxamine maleate in maternally separated rats

Exposure to early life stress has been shown to result in anxiety-like symptoms and exacerbates degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in a rat model of Parkinson's disease (PD). First line treatment for anxiety disorders includes the use of Fluvoxamine maleate (FM). In this study, we investigated whether treating anxiety-like symptoms with FM has an effect in alleviating the neurotoxic effects of 6-OHDA in a parkinsonian rat model. Early maternal separation was used to create a rat model that depicts anxiety-like symptoms. Maternally separated adult Sprague-Dawley rats were treated with FM prior to and following lesion with 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA). The elevated plus-maze (EPM) and the forelimb akinesia tests were used to evaluate anxiety-like symptoms and motor impairment respectively. Blood plasma was used to measure corticosterone concentration, and striatal tissue was collected for dopamine (DA) and serotonin (5-HT) analysis. Our results show that animals exposed to early life stress displayed increased anxiety-like symptoms and elevated basal plasma corticosterone concentration which were attenuated by treatment with FM. A 6-OHDA lesion effect was evidenced by impairment in the forelimb akinesia test as well as decreased DA and 5-HT concentrations in the lesioned striatum. These effects were attenuated on DA neurons by FM treatment in the pre-lesion treated as opposed to the post-lesion treated rats. This study suggests that early treatment of anxiety-like behavior decreases the vulnerability of DA neurons to neurotoxic insults later in life thus slowing down DA degeneration in PD. (C) 2016 ISDN. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.