Neonatal clomipramine treatment in the rat does not affect social, sexual and exploratory behaviors in adulthood.

The potential ability of the tricyclic anti-depressant clomipramine to cause an increase in anxiety in adult animals following neonatal treatment with the drug has been investigated; no such anxiogenic actions were found in the social interaction test. Furthermore, the behavior of animals that had received the drug as pups did not differ from that of the controls in open field or holeboard tests, nor in tests of sexual behavior, aggressive and dominance behaviors or passive avoidance learning.