Publication Date:
1983-09-16
Description:
From birth to day 21, rat offspring received daily injections of naltrexone at a dosage that blocked morphine-induced analgesia 24 hours a day. At 21 days, body, brain, and cerebellar weights of naltrexone-injected animals were 18, 11, and 5 percent greater than corresponding control weights. In addition, morphometric analysis of the cerebrum revealed a somatosensory cortex that was 18 percent thicker than that of the controls. The cerebellum of naltrexone-treated rats was 41 percent larger in total area and contained at least 70 percent more glial cells and 30 percent more granule neurons. Neurons derived prenatally were unaffected by drug treatment. These results show that naltrexone can stimulate body and brain growth in rats and suggest a role for the endorphin and opiate receptor system in development.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Zagon, I S -- McLaughlin, P J -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1983 Sep 16;221(4616):1179-80.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6612331" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Animals, Newborn
;
Body Weight/drug effects
;
Brain/*drug effects/growth & development/ultrastructure
;
Cerebellum/drug effects
;
Morphine/*antagonists & inhibitors
;
Naloxone/*analogs & derivatives
;
Naltrexone/*pharmacology
;
Neuroglia/drug effects
;
Organ Size/drug effects
;
Rats
;
Rats, Inbred Strains
;
Somatosensory Cortex/drug effects
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
