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Updated: May 24, 2026

Polygraphic Recording Procedure for Measuring Sleep in Mice
Published on: January 25, 2016
Enhancement of pentobarbital-induced sleep by apigenin through chloride ion channel activation
Jae-Wook Kim1, Chung-Soo Kim, Zhenzhen Hu
1College of Pharmacy, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju 361-763, Korea.
Abstract:
This experiment was performed to investigate whether apigenin has hypnotic effects and/or enhances pentobarbital-induced sleep behaviors through the GABAergic systems. Apigenin prolonged sleep time induced by pentobarbital similar to muscimol, a GABA(A) receptors agonist. Apigenin also increased sleep rate and sleep time in the combined administration with pentobarbital at the sub-hypnotic dosage, and showed synergic effects with muscimol in potentiating sleep onset and enhancing sleep time induced by pentobarbital. In addition, both of apigeinin and pentobarbital increased chloride influx in primary cultured cerebellar granule cells. Apigenin increased glutamate decarboxylase (GAD) and had no effect on the expression of GABA(A) receptor α-, β-, γ-subunits in n hippocampus of mouse brain, showing different expression of subunits from pentobarbital treatment group. In conclusion, it is suggested that apigenin augments pentobarbital-induced sleep behaviors through chloride ion channel activation.
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