Naltrexone, serotonin receptor subtype antagonists, and glucoprivic intake: 2. Insulin

Endogenous opioid modulation of food intake and body weight: Implications for opioid influences upon motivation and addiction

This review is part of a special issue dedicated to Opioid addiction, and examines the influential role of opioid peptides, opioid receptors and opiate drugs in mediating food intake and body weight control in rodents. This review postulates that opioid mediation of food intake was an example of "positive addictive" properties that provide motivational drives to maintain opioid-seeking behavior and that are not subject to the "negative addictive" properties associated with tolerance, dependence and withdrawal. Data demonstrate that opiate and opioid peptide agonists stimulate food intake through homeostatic activation of sensory, metabolic and energy-related In contrast, general, and particularly mu-selective, opioid receptor antagonists typically block these homeostatically-driven ingestive behaviors. Intake of palatable and hedonic food stimuli is inhibited by general, and particularly mu-selective, opioid receptor antagonists. The selectivity of specific opioid agonists to elicit food intake was confirmed through the use of opioid receptor antagonists and molecular knockdown (antisense) techniques incapacitating specific exons of opioid receptor genes. Further extensive evidence demonstrated that homeostatic and hedonic ingestive situations correspondingly altered the levels and expression of opioid peptides and opioid receptors. Opioid mediation of food intake was controlled by a distributed brain network intimately related to both the appetitive-consummatory sites implicated in food intake as well as sites intimately involved in reward and reinforcement. This emergent system appears to sustain the "positive addictive" properties providing motivational drives to maintain opioid-seeking behavior.

Endogenous opioids and feeding behavior: a 30-year historical perspective

This invited review, based on the receipt of the Third Gayle A. Olson and Richard D. Olson Prize for the publication of the outstanding behavioral article published in the journal Peptides in 2002, examines the 30-year historical perspective of the role of the endogenous opioid system in feeding behavior. The review focuses on the advances that this field has made over the past 30 years as a result of the timely discoveries that were made concerning this important neuropeptide system, and how these discoveries were quickly applied to the analysis of feeding behavior and attendant homeostatic processes. The discoveries of the opioid receptors and opioid peptides, and the establishment of their relevance to feeding behavior were pivotal in studies performed in the 1970s. The 1980s were characterized by the establishment of opioid receptor subtype agonists and antagonists and their relevance to the modulation of feeding behavior as well as by the use of general opioid antagonists in demonstrating the wide array of ingestive situations and paradigms involving the endogenous opioid system. The more recent work from the 1990s to the present, utilizes the advantages created by the cloning of the opioid receptor genes, the development of knockout and knockdown techniques, the systematic utilization of a systems neuroscience approach, and establishment of the reciprocity of how manipulations of opioid peptides and receptors affect feeding behavior with how feeding states affect levels of opioid peptides and receptors. The role of G-protein effector systems in opioid-mediated feeding responses, which was the subject of the prize-winning article, is then reviewed.

Central opioid receptors mediate glucoprivic inhibition of pituitary LH secretion

The present studies investigated the significance of glucoprivic metabolic signals, particularly those of central origin, to the regulation of pituitary luteinizing hormone (LH). Groups of gonadectomized (GDX) adult male rats were treated with 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG), an inhibitor of glycolysis, by either intravenous (50, 100, or 200 mg/kg) or intracerebroventricular (5, 20, or 100 microg/rat) administration. Systemic drug treatment caused a significant decrease in mean plasma LH levels compared with saline-treated controls. Intracerebroventricular administration of 2-DG was also efficacious in suppressing circulating LH; animals treated with either of the two highest doses of the drug exhibited a significant reduction in plasma LH. In vitro studies examined direct effects of 2-DG on pituitary gonadotrope secretory activity. Exposure of anterior pituitary tissue to 2-DG during short-term perfusion had no significant impact upon either basal or gonadotropin-releasing hormone-stimulated LH release. Finally, groups of GDX rats were pretreated by intracerebroventricular administration of either the nonselective opioid receptor antagonist, naltrexone, or the selective mu-opioid receptor antagonist, beta-funaltrexamine (beta-FNA), before intravenous injection of 2-DG. Both receptor antagonists were observed to attenuate the suppressive effects of 2-DG on circulating LH in these animals. In summary, treatment of GDX rats with the glucose antimetabolite, 2-DG, decreased plasma LH, suggesting that metabolic signaling of cellular glucose oxidation is of physiological importance to the regulation of pituitary hormone secretion. Findings that plasma LH was diminished in animals treated intracerebroventricularly with 2-DG implicate central glucoprivic receptors in neuroendocrine mechanisms governing the reproductive endocrine axis. Attenuation of 2-DG-induced decreases in circulating LH by opioid receptor antagonists suggests that these receptors, particularly the mu-subtype, mediate central effects of glucoprivation on circulating LH.

Naltrexone, dopamine receptor agonists and antagonists, and food intake in rats: 1. Food deprivation

Different forms of food intake are reduced by both agonists and antagonists of dopamine D1 and D2 receptors as well as general opioid antagonists. The present study evaluated whether deprivation (24 h)-induced food intake was altered following systemic administration of either the D1 agonist, SKF-38393, the D1 antagonist, SCH-23390, the D2 agonist, quinpirole, or the D2 antagonist, haloperidol, alone or in combination with the general opioid antagonist, naltrexone. Both SKF-38393 (5-10 mg/kg) and SCH-23390 (100-200 micrograms/kg) significantly and dose dependently reduced deprivation-induced intake. Whereas quinpirole (0.5-1 mg/kg) failed to alter deprivation-induced intake, haloperidol increased deprivation-induced intake at low (50 micrograms) doses and decreased intake at higher (100-500 micrograms/kg) doses. Naltrexone (2.5-10 mg/kg) significantly inhibited deprivation-induced intake. When naltrexone was paired with behaviorally ineffective doses of either SCH-23390 (2.5-100 micrograms/kg), quinpirole (0.01-1 mg/kg), or haloperidol (50 micrograms/kg), the degree of reduction of deprivation-induced intake was significantly greater than that produced by naltrexone alone. Pairing naltrexone with SKF-38393 produced reductions of deprivation-induced intake comparable to that of naltrexone alone.

Naltrexone, serotonin receptor subtype antagonists, and carbohydrate intake in rats

Functional interactions between serotonergic (5-HT) and opioid drugs have been observed with 5-HT3 receptor antagonism enhancing the inhibitory actions of naloxone and naltrexone in both food-deprived and glucoprivic rats; 5-HT2A/C receptor antagonism enhanced naltrexone's inhibition of insulin hyperphagia. The present study examined whether pretreatment with either general 5-HT (methysergide: 0.5-5 mg/kg), 5-HT2A/C (ritanserin: 0.25-2.5 mg/kg), or 5-HT3 (ICS 205930: 0.5-5 mg/kg) antagonists altered the pattern and magnitude of ad lib intake of simple (sucrose: 10%) or more complex (maltose dextrin: MD, 10%) carbohydrate solutions, or naltrexone's (0.25-2.5 mg/kg) inhibition of these forms of intake. Methysergide significantly increased the pattern and magnitude of sucrose intake at low (0.5-2.5 mg/kg) doses, and transiently delayed the pattern of MD intake at high (5 mg/kg) doses. Ritanserin significantly accelerated the pattern, but not the magnitude of sucrose intake at low (0.25-1.25 mg/kg) doses without affecting MD intake. ICS 205930 reduced the magnitude of sucrose intake at the highest (5 mg/kg) dose, and transiently reduced MD intake. Naltrexone dose dependently altered the pattern and magnitude of both sucrose and MD intake. Coadministration of ritanserin and naltrexone either eliminated or delayed the pattern of opioid antagonist inhibition of both sucrose and MD intake. Methysergide and ICS 205930 pretreatment produced minor changes in the pattern of naltrexone-induced inhibition. These data indicate that 5-HT receptor differentially modulate the pattern of carbohydrate intake, and indicate differential ingestive interactions between 5-HT and opioid antagonists under challenge and palatable conditions.

Endogenous opiates: 1992

This paper is the fifteenth installment of our annual review of research concerning the opiate system. It includes papers published during 1992 involving the behavioral, non-analgesic, effects of the endogenous opiate peptides. The specific topics this year include stress; tolerance and dependence; eating; drinking; gastrointestinal and renal function; mental illness and mood; learning, memory, and reward; cardiovascular responses; respiration and thermoregulation; seizures and other neurological disorders; electrical-related activity; general activity and locomotion; sex, pregnancy, and development; immunological responses; and other behaviors.