Fluoxetine prevents PCP- and MK801-induced HSP70 expression in injured limbic cortical neurons of rats.
Biological psychiatry May 1, 2000 M Tomitaka, S Tomitaka, S Rajdev et al.
NMDA receptor antagonists like PCP and MK801 produce schizophrenia-like psychosis in humans and damage neurons in the cingulate and retrosplenial cortices of rat brains. Pretreating female rats with the SSRI fluoxetine (20 mg/kg) one hour before MK801 prevented the expression of heat shock protein HSP70, a marker of neuronal injury, in those brain regions. Fluoxetine at 10 or 20 mg/kg also prevented HSP70 induction by PCP. Fluoxetine prevents the neurotoxicity of NMDA receptor antagonists in rat brain, suggesting SSRIs could modulate psychosis and offering a model to study the link between PCP's hallucinogenic properties and those of LSD.