Abstract
Drug holidays have been proposed as a preventive strategy against the development of tardive dyskinesia. Three animal studies in which dopamine receptor hypersensitivity after chronic neuroleptic treatment was used as a model for tardive dyskinesia failed to find any reduction in dopamine receptor hypersensitivity with intermittent, as opposed to continuous, treatment. Since most neuroleptics have a long half-life in vivo, we hypothesized that truly drug-free periods may not have been achieved in previous studies. Droperidol, an ultrashort-acting butyrophenone neuroleptic, was administered to rats for 22 days in twice-daily injections or one injection every 48 hours. At 60 hours after the last dose there was no difference in apomorphine-induced stereotypy between continuously treated and intermittently treated animals. Thus, even totally drug-free periods do not reduce the development of dopamine receptor hypersensitivity.
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© 1985 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Belmaker, R.H., Elami, A., Bannet, J. (1985). Intermittent Treatment with Droperidol, a Short-Acting Neuroleptic, Increases Behavioral Dopamine Receptor Sensitivity. In: Casey, D.E., Chase, T.N., Christensen, A.V., Gerlach, J. (eds) Dyskinesia. Psychopharmacology Supplementum, vol 2. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-70140-5_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-70140-5_24
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