Unitat de Farmacologia, Departament de Patologia i Terapèutica Experimental, Facultat de Medicina, Universitat de Barcelona, 08097 L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain.
Neurosci Lett. 2011 Apr 20;494(1):44-8. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2011.02.050. Epub 2011 Mar 6.
Nowadays the pharmacological treatment of the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is based on amphetamine derivatives (i.e. methylphenidate). However, these drugs induce a large array of adverse side effects, thus less aggressive psychostimulant drugs (i.e. caffeine) are being proposed in the management of ADHD. Following this tendency, we decided to study the possible therapeutic use of caffeine in an animal model of ADHD, namely the neonatal 6-hydroxy-dopamine (6-OHDA)-lesioned rat. Therefore, at postnatal day 7 rats were lesioned at the left striatum with 6-OHDA or with saline. Thereafter, at postnatal day 25 their activity and attention were measured with the Olton maze before caffeine was administered ad libitum in the drinking water. Next, after 14 days of caffeine treatment, we repeated these measurements to assess the effect of caffeine on motor activity and attention deficit. Interestingly, while no changes in the motor activity measurements were observed before and after caffeine administration, a significant improvement in the attention deficit of the 6-OHDA lesioned rats was achieved after caffeine treatment. Thus, our results led us to hypothesize that caffeine might be useful to manage the attention deficit during the prepubertal period of ADHD.
如今，注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）的药物治疗基于苯丙胺衍生物（如哌甲酯）。然而，这些药物会引起一系列严重的不良反应，因此人们提出使用刺激性较小的精神药物（如咖啡因）来治疗 ADHD。基于这一趋势，我们决定在 ADHD 的动物模型——新生 6-羟多巴胺（6-OHDA）损伤大鼠中研究咖啡因的可能治疗用途。因此，在出生后第 7 天，大鼠的左侧纹状体被 6-OHDA 或生理盐水损伤。此后，在出生后第 25 天，在自由饮用含咖啡因的水之前，我们使用奥顿迷宫测量它们的活动和注意力。接下来，在接受咖啡因治疗 14 天后，我们重复这些测量以评估咖啡因对运动活动和注意力缺陷的影响。有趣的是，虽然在给予咖啡因前后，运动活动测量没有变化，但在接受咖啡因治疗后，6-OHDA 损伤大鼠的注意力缺陷得到了显著改善。因此，我们的结果使我们假设咖啡因可能有助于在 ADHD 的青春期前阶段管理注意力缺陷。
