Activation of midline thalamic nuclei by antipsychotic drugs.

The thalamus has been proposed as a site which may be involved in the production of the syndrome of schizophrenia and the response of schizophrenic symptoms to treatment. These studies test whether, consistent with this hypothesis, the activation of thalamic nuclei is a shared property of neuroleptic antipsychotic drugs. Rats were given single doses of the typical high and low potency neuroleptics haloperidol (1 mg/kg) and chlorpromazine (20 mg/kg), the atypical neuroleptics thiroridazine (20 mg/kg) and clozapine (20 mg/kg), the specific dopamine antagonist raclopride (3 mg/kg), the mixed dopamine/serotonin antagonist risperidone (3 mg/kg) or drug-free vehicle. Increased expression of Fos-like protein was utilized as a marker of cellular activation. All drugs tested, including typical and atypical antipsychotic agents, led to similar effects on the midline thalamic paraventricular, centromedian and rhomboid nuclei and the nucleus reuniens. These results suggest that midline thalamic nuclei may participate in neural circuits mediating some of the shared effects of antipsychotic drugs.

Polymorphisms of the dopamine D4 receptor and response to antipsychotic drugs.

The dopamine D4 receptor may be a site through which the clinical effects of antipsychotic drugs are mediated. Polymorphisms of a 48 base pair repeat in the third exon of the DRD4 gene code for different length segments in the third intracytoplasmic loop of the D4 receptor. The most common long (seven repeat) form of the D4 receptor has been shown in both physiologic and pharmacologic experiments to respond differently to dopamine agonists and antagonists than do shorter forms of D4. Thus, variants of D4 may partly determine patient response to antipsychotic drugs and, in particular, response to typical neuroleptics, which have a relatively low affinity for the D4 receptor, as compared to clozapine, which has a relatively high affinity for D4. DRD4 polymorphisms in the third intron were characterized in 28 patients with chronic psychosis who responded well to typical neuroleptics, 32 patients who responded well to clozapine, and 57 healthy comparison subjects. Patients responding to typical neuroleptics carried the allele for the long (seven repeat) form of the D4 receptor (allele frequency 8.9%) less frequently than patients responding to clozapine (allele frequency 23.4%, P = 0.046) or healthy comparison subjects (allele frequency 26.3%, P = 0.004). The results of this study suggest that inherited variants of D4 may explain some of the interindividual variation seen in patient response to different classes of antipsychotic medication.