[Investigations of drug addiction mechanism in planarians].

ABSTRACT

Drug abuse harms people's health and lead to a series of economic, social and political problems. However, the problems of physical damage, physical dependence and withdrawal syndrome caused by drug abuse still exist. Planarians have been a new animal experimental model in vivo for neuropharmacology, because they possess a primitive central nervous system and neurotransmitter systems similarly to mammalians. In addition, they have the advantage of convenience and low cost and no ethics problems compared with mammalian models. The advantages of planarian as experimental model in vivo and the progress of the investigations of drug addiction mechanism in planarians are summarized, and the trends in this field are discussed in this review.