Andrews J S, Stephens D N
Department of Neuropsychopharmacology, Schering AG, Berlin, F.R.G.
Pharmacol Ther. 1990;47(2):267-80. doi: 10.1016/0163-7258(90)90090-o.
Drug discrimination is a technique for investigating the stimulus properties of centrally active drugs. Although many studies have employed animals to investigate the stimulus properties of substances used clinically for the treatment of anxiety and depression, it would be a mistake to consider the internal discriminative stimuli as being related specifically to the anxiolytic or antidepressant properties of these drugs. Rather drug cues are better considered as relating to the pharmacological action of classes of compounds. Thus, benzodiazepine cues generalize to other compounds acting at benzodiazepine receptors, but not to substances (anxiolytic or otherwise) acting at 5-HT1A receptors. Similarly, antidepressants with different pharmacological properties, for example the tricyclic imipramine, or the phenylaminoketone buproprion produce distinct, unrelated discriminative stimuli. For this reason, the limits of drug discrimination techniques for investigating novel anxiolytic or antidepressant drugs should be clearly recognized. Attempts to identify an anxiogenic discriminative stimulus using pentylenetetrazole have also been misguided. In this technique it has proven difficult to separate unequivocally the pharmacological proconvulsant effects of the drug from the psychological construct anxiety. Nevertheless, drug discrimination remains a valuable technique for investigating pharmacological interactions in animals and man.
药物辨别是一种用于研究中枢活性药物刺激特性的技术。尽管许多研究使用动物来研究临床上用于治疗焦虑和抑郁的物质的刺激特性，但将内部辨别刺激视为与这些药物的抗焦虑或抗抑郁特性特别相关是错误的。相反，药物线索更好地被认为与化合物类别的药理作用有关。因此，苯二氮䓬线索可推广到作用于苯二氮䓬受体的其他化合物，但不适用于作用于5-HT1A受体的物质（无论是否具有抗焦虑作用）。同样，具有不同药理特性的抗抑郁药，例如三环类丙咪嗪或苯氨基酮安非他酮，会产生不同的、不相关的辨别刺激。因此，应清楚认识到药物辨别技术在研究新型抗焦虑或抗抑郁药物方面的局限性。使用戊四氮来识别致焦虑辨别刺激的尝试也被误导了。在这项技术中，已证明很难明确区分药物的药理惊厥作用和心理结构焦虑。尽管如此，药物辨别仍然是研究动物和人类药理相互作用的一项有价值的技术。
