Although lithium has been used therapeutically to treat patients with bipolar disorder for over 50 years, its mechanism of action, as well as that of other drugs used to treat bipolar disorder, is not agreed upon. In the present paper, I review studies in unanaesthetized rats using a neuropharmacological approach, combined with kinetic, biochemical and molecular biology techniques, demonstrating that chronic administration of three commonly used mood stabilizers (lithium, valproic acid and carbamazepine), at therapeutically relevant doses, selectively target the brain arachidonic acid cascade. Upon chronic administration, lithium and carbamazepine decrease the binding activity of activator protein-2 and, in turn, the transcription, translation and activity of its arachidonic acid-selective calcium-dependent phospholipase A2 gene product, whereas chronic valproic acid non-competitively inhibits long-chain acyl-CoA synthetase. The net overlapping effects of the three mood stabilizers are decreased turnover of arachidonic acid, but not of docosahexaenoic acid, in rat brain phospholipids, as well as decreased brain cyclo-oxygenase-2 and prostaglandin E2. As an extension of this theory, drugs that are thought to induce switching to mania, especially when administered during bipolar depression (fluoxetine and imipramine), up-regulate enzymes of the arachidonic acid cascade and turnover of arachidonic acid in rat brain phospholipids. Future basic and clinical studies on the arachidonic acid hypothesis of bipolar disorder are warranted.
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Conference Article|
September 21 2009
Is the brain arachidonic acid cascade a common target of drugs used to manage bipolar disorder?
Richard P. Bazinet
Richard P. Bazinet
1
1Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Room 306, FitzGerald Building, 150 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3E2
1email richard.bazinet@utoronto.ca
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Publisher: Portland Press Ltd
Received:
July 09 2009
Online ISSN: 1470-8752
Print ISSN: 0300-5127
© The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Biochemical Society
2009
Biochem Soc Trans (2009) 37 (5): 1104–1109.
Article history
Received:
July 09 2009
Citation
Richard P. Bazinet; Is the brain arachidonic acid cascade a common target of drugs used to manage bipolar disorder?. Biochem Soc Trans 1 October 2009; 37 (5): 1104–1109. doi: https://doi.org/10.1042/BST0371104
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