Behavioral Neuropharmacology Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0308, United States.
ACS Chem Neurosci. 2015 Mar 18;6(3):359-61. doi: 10.1021/acschemneuro.5b00018. Epub 2015 Jan 28.
Pharmaceutical companies assessing the nervous system effects of candidate therapeutics often use a behavioral assay in rodents that assesses the drug's subjective (internal stimulus) effects. Variants of this so-called "drug discrimination task" have also been widely used by basic scientist for more than 50 years to study the receptor actions of a host of ligands related to disease states and neuropathologies. Notably, most published research with this task has used male rats or mice. This situation is unfortunate and severely limits the utility of the research, given the well-documented differences between women and men on drug efficacy and safety, as well as known sex differences in the neural and behavioral effects of drugs. In this Viewpoint, we highlight the need for basic researchers, as well as pharmaceutical scientists, to include females in drug discrimination studies in a manner that allows detection and interpretation of potential sex differences.
制药公司在评估候选治疗药物对神经系统的影响时，通常会在啮齿动物中使用一种行为测定方法，评估药物的主观（内部刺激）效应。这种所谓的“药物辨别任务”的变体也被基础科学家广泛使用了 50 多年，用于研究与疾病状态和神经病理学相关的许多配体的受体作用。值得注意的是，使用该任务的大多数已发表研究都使用雄性大鼠或小鼠。这种情况很不幸，严重限制了研究的实用性，因为有充分的文献记载表明，药物的疗效和安全性在男女之间存在差异，以及药物对神经和行为的影响存在已知的性别差异。在本观点中，我们强调基础研究人员和制药科学家需要以允许检测和解释潜在性别差异的方式，将女性纳入药物辨别研究中。
