Activity of desipramine, fluoxetine and nomifensine on spontaneous and p-CPA-induced muricidal aggression.

Antidepressant drugs reportedly counteract mouse-killing activity by rats. There is evidence that antidepressant derivatives exert their anti-muricidal activity through both noradrenergic and serotonergic neurons. The experiments were performed in two types of muricidal aggression with three antidepressants characterized by different neurochemical activity. No major differences in the antimuricidal efficacy of the drug-employed were found, even though spontaneous muricidal animals resulted on the whole less sensitive to antidepressants than p-CPA-induced muricidal rats. In these last animals nomifensine proved to be more potent than desipramine and fluoxetine.