Animal Models of Mania: Essential Tools to Better Understand Bipolar Disorder

Aline S. de Miranda, Roberto Andreatini, Antônio L. Teixeira

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Mania is the hallmark of bipolar disorder but there are relatively fewer animal models of mania than models of depression. The existence of valid animal models is important to develop new effective drugs and to understand the neurobiology of mania. For example, except lithium, the pharmacological treatment of mania relies on drugs that were developed for other disorders, such as antipsychotics and anticonvulsants. Pharmacological models (e.g., amphetamine and ouabain-induced hyperlocomotion) are the most frequently used models of mania, showing good predictive validity (e.g., sensitive to lithium, anticonvulsants, or antipsychotics) and giving interesting results about neurobiology of mania (e.g., oxidative stress increase and protein kinase C hyperactivity). Furthermore, studies using these models have suggested antimanic-like effects of some promising compounds. However, these models have some drawbacks, such as potential false results due to pharmacokinetics interaction, acute response to treatment that did not correlate with clinical data, and they frequently rely on just one behavioral variable. Other approaches to model mania in rodents are environmentally (e.g., sleep deprivation) or genetically (e.g., knockout DAT mice) based models. These models are promising and apparently they overcome some limitations of pharmacologically based models, but they are less validated and used. Finally, new behavioral readouts have been proposed (hole exploration by mice and high frequency ultrasound vocalizations in rats) which can refine these models and increase their content and face validity.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationAnimal Models for the Study of Human Disease
Subtitle of host publicationSecond Edition
PublisherElsevier Inc.
Pages1131-1143
Number of pages13
ISBN (Electronic)9780124158948
ISBN (Print)9780128094686
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 28 2017
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Bipolar disorder
  • Genetic models
  • Mania
  • Psychostimulants
  • Sleep deprivation

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Medicine
  • General Immunology and Microbiology

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