Failure of memantine to "reverse" quinpirole-induced hypomotility

To evaluate antidepressant-like effect of memantine in a rat model.

Male Wistar rats were treated intraperitoneally with either vehicle, memantine (10 mg/kg) or imipramine (20 mg/kg), for 3 wk. Twenty-four hour after the last treatment animals were challenged with quinpirole (0.3 mg/kg s.c.) and tested for motor activity. After 1 h habituation to the motility cages, the motor response was recorded for the following 45-min and the data were collected in 5-min time bins.

As expected, chronic treatment with imipramine potentiated the locomotor stimulant effect of quinpirole. On the contrary, chronic memantine administration failed to induce the behavioral supersensitivity to the dopamine agonist.

The results show that memantine, at variance with antidepressant treatments, fails to induce dopaminergic behavioral supersensitivity. This observation is consistent with the results of preclinical and clinical studies suggesting that memantine does not have an acute antidepressant action but does have an antimanic and mood-stabilizing effect.