Halberstadt, AL, Chatha, M, Klein, AK, Wallach, J and Brandt, SD (2020) Correlation between the potency of hallucinogens in the mouse head-twitch response assay and their behavioral and subjective effects in other species. Neuropharmacology, 167 (1). ISSN 0028-3908

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Abstract

Serotonergic hallucinogens such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) induce head twitches in rodents via 5-HT2A receptor activation. The goal of the present investigation was to determine whether a correlation exists between the potency of hallucinogens in the mouse head-twitch response (HTR) paradigm and their reported potencies in other species, specifically rats and humans. Dose-response experiments were conducted with phenylalkylamine and tryptamine hallucinogens in C57BL/6J mice, enlarging the available pool of HTR potency data to 40 total compounds. For agents where human data are available (n = 36), a strong positive correlation (r = 0.9448) was found between HTR potencies in mice and reported hallucinogenic potencies in humans. HTR potencies were also found to be correlated with published drug discrimination ED50 values for substitution in rats trained with either LSD (r = 0.9484, n = 16) or 2,5-dimethoxy-4-methylamphetamine (r = 0.9564, n = 21). All three of these behavioral effects (HTR in mice, hallucinogen discriminative stimulus effects in rats, and psychedelic effects in humans) have been linked to 5-HT2A receptor activation. We present evidence that hallucinogens induce these three effects with remarkably consistent potencies. In addition to having high construct validity, the HTR assay also appears to show significant predictive validity, confirming its translational relevance for predicting subjective potency of hallucinogens in humans. These findings support the use of the HTR paradigm as a preclinical model of hallucinogen psychopharmacology and in structure-activity relationship studies of hallucinogens. Future investigations with a larger number of test agents will evaluate whether the HTR assay can be used to predict the hallucinogenic potency of 5-HT2A agonists in humans.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	1109 Neurosciences, 1115 Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences, 1701 Psychology
Subjects:	Q Science > QH Natural history > QH426 Genetics R Medicine > RS Pharmacy and materia medica
Divisions:	Pharmacy & Biomolecular Sciences
Publisher:	Elsevier
Date Deposited:	09 Jan 2020 10:03
Last Modified:	04 Jan 2022 16:45
DOI or ID number:	10.1016/j.neuropharm.2019.107933
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/11988

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