Antidepressant-Like Properties of Intrastriatal Botulinum Neurotoxin-A Injection in a Unilateral 6-OHDA Rat Model of Parkinson's Disease

• Published in: Toxins Vol. 13; no. 7; p. 505
• Main Authors: Antipova, Veronica, Holzmann, Carsten, Hawlitschka, Alexander, Witt, Martin, Wree, Andreas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 20-07-2021; MDPI
• Subjects: 6-OHDA; Amphetamine; Amphetamines; Animals; Antidepressants; Antidepressive Agents - therapeutic use; Anxiety; Apomorphine; behavior; Behavior, Animal; botulinum neurotoxin-A; Botulinum toxin; Botulinum Toxins, Type A - administration & dosage; Botulinum Toxins, Type A - therapeutic use; Cognition & reasoning; Corpus Striatum; Correlation analysis; depression; Disease Models, Animal; Drug therapy; Field tests; hemiparkinsonian rat; Injections; Male; Mental depression; Motor Activity; Motor task performance; Movement disorders; Neurodegenerative diseases; Neurotoxins; Open-field behavior; Oxidopamine; Parkinson Disease; Parkinson's disease; Parkinsonian Disorders; Patients; Rats; Rats, Wistar; Rotational behavior; striatum; Toxins; correlation analysis; tail suspension test; striatum; 6-OHDA; botulinum neurotoxin-A; depression; behavior; open field test; elevated plus maze test; hemiparkinsonian rat; forced swim test
• ISSN: 2072-6651; 2072-6651
• DOI: 10.3390/toxins13070505

Parkinson's patients often suffer from depression and anxiety, for which there are no optimal treatments. Hemiparkinsonian (hemi-PD) rats were used to test whether intrastriatal Botulinum neurotoxin-A (BoNT-A) application could also have antidepressant-like properties in addition to the known improvement of motor performance. To quantify depression- and anxiety-like behavior, the forced swim test, tail suspension test, open field test, and elevated plus maze test were applied to hemi-PD rats injected with BoNT-A or vehicle. Furthermore, we correlated the results in the forced swim test, open field test, and elevated plus maze test with the rotational behavior induced by apomorphine and amphetamine. Hemi-PD rats did not show significant anxiety-like behavior as compared with Sham 6-OHDA- + Sham BoNT-A-injected as well as with non-injected rats. However, hemi-PD rats demonstrated increased depression-like behaviors compared with Sham- or non-injected rats; this was seen by increased struggling frequency and increased immobility frequency. Hemi-PD rats intrastriatally injected with BoNT-A exhibited reduced depression-like behavior compared with the respective vehicle-receiving hemi-PD animals. The significant effects of intrastriatally applied BoNT-A seen in the forced swim test are reminiscent of those found after various antidepressant drug therapies. Our data correspond with the efficacy of BoNT-A treatment of glabellar frown lines in treating patients with major depression and suggest that also intrastriatal injected BoNT-A may have some antidepressant-like effect on hemi-PD.