Overactive Bladder Successfully Treated with Duloxetine in a Female Adolescent

The Orexin OX2 Receptor-Dependent Pathway Is Implicated in the Development of Overactive Bladder and Depression in Rats Exposed to Corticosterone

AIM

In the present study, we wanted to check whether TCS OX2 29 (TCS), a potent selective antagonist of OX2 receptors, would have positive effects in an animal model of detrusor overactivity co-existed with the depression-like state in Wistar male rats.

METHODS

The forced swim test with the measurement of spontaneous locomotor activity, conscious cystometry, determination of c-Fos expression in central micturition areas, and a set of biochemical analyses (with the use of urine, hippocampus, bladder urothelium, and detrusor muscle of tested animals) were carried out.

RESULTS

The outcomes showed that a 7-day administration of TCS (3 mg/kg/day, subcutaneously) normalizes the cystometric parameters corresponding to overactivity of the detrusor and reverses the pro-depressive response. Furthermore, the antagonism of OX2 receptors restored the abnormal levels of overactive bladder markers (i.e., ATP, CGRP, OCT3, TRPV1, ROCK1, and VAChT), diminished neuronal overactivity in central micturition areas (i.e., pontine micturition center, ventrolateral periaqueductal gray, and medial preoptic area) as well as restored the altered hippocampal levels of CRF, cytokines (IL-1β, IL-6, IL-10, and TNF-α), and growth factors (BDNF and NGF) that reflected biochemical disturbances detected in depressed people.

CONCLUSIONS

It seems that our findings open new perspectives regarding the implication of the orexin system in the functioning of the urinary bladder and in the pathophysiology of depression.

Molecular mechanisms of cholinergic neurotransmission in visceral smooth muscles with a focus on receptor-operated TRPC4 channel and impairment of gastrointestinal motility by general anaesthetics and anxiolytics

Acetylcholine is the primary excitatory neurotransmitter in visceral smooth muscles, wherein it binds to and activates two muscarinic receptors subtypes, M2 and M3, thus causing smooth muscle excitation and contraction. The first part of this review focuses on the types of cells involved in cholinergic neurotransmission and on the molecular mechanisms underlying acetylcholine-induced membrane depolarisation, which is the central event of excitation-contraction coupling causing Ca2+ entry via L-type Ca2+ channels and smooth muscle contraction. Studies of the muscarinic cation current in intestinal myocytes (mICAT) revealed its main molecular counterpart, receptor-operated TRPC4 channel, which is activated in synergy by both M2 and M3 receptors. M3 receptors activation is of permissive nature, while activation of M2 receptors via Gi/o proteins that are coupled to them plays a direct role in TRPC4 opening. Our understanding of signalling pathways underlying mICAT generation has vastly expanded in recent years through studies of TRPC4 gating in native cells and its regulation in heterologous cells. Recent studies using muscarinic receptor knockout have established that at low agonist concentration activation of both M2 receptor and the M2/M3 receptor complex elicits smooth muscle contraction, while at high agonist concentration M3 receptor function becomes dominant. Based on this knowledge, in the second part of this review we discuss the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the numerous anticholinergic effects on neuroactive drugs, in particular general anaesthetics and anxiolytics, which can significantly impair gastrointestinal motility. This article is part of the Special Issue on "Ukrainian Neuroscience".

The Innovative Approach in Functional Bladder Disorders: The Communication Between Bladder and Brain-Gut Axis

Functional bladder disorders including overactive bladder and interstitial cystitis may induce problems in many other parts of our body such as brain and gut. In fact, diagnosis is often less accurate owing to their complex symptoms. To have correct diagnosis of these diseases, we need to understand the pathophysiology behind overlapped clinical presentation. First, we focused on reviewing literatures that have reported the link between bladder and brain, as the patients with bladder disorders frequently accompanied mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. Second, we reviewed literatures that have described the relationship between bladder and gut. There exist many evidences of patients who suffered from both bladder and intestinal diseases, such as irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease, at the same time. Furthermore, the interaction between brain and gut, well-known as brain-gut axis, might be a key factor that could change the activity of bladder and vice versa. For example, the affective disorders could alter the activity of efferent nerves or autonomic nervous system that modulate the gut itself and its microbiota, which might cause the destruction of homeostasis in bladder eventually. In this way, the communication between bladder and brain-gut axis might affect permeability, inflammation, as well as infectious etiology and dysbiosis in bladder diseases. In this review, we aimed to find an innovative insight of the pathophysiology in the functional bladder disorders, and we could provide a new understanding of the overlapped clinical presentation by elucidating the pathophysiology of functional bladder disorders.

Application of network link prediction in drug discovery

Background

Technological and research advances have produced large volumes of biomedical data. When represented as a network (graph), these data become useful for modeling entities and interactions in biological and similar complex systems. In the field of network biology and network medicine, there is a particular interest in predicting results from drug–drug, drug–disease, and protein–protein interactions to advance the speed of drug discovery. Existing data and modern computational methods allow to identify potentially beneficial and harmful interactions, and therefore, narrow drug trials ahead of actual clinical trials. Such automated data-driven investigation relies on machine learning techniques. However, traditional machine learning approaches require extensive preprocessing of the data that makes them impractical for large datasets. This study presents wide range of machine learning methods for predicting outcomes from biomedical interactions and evaluates the performance of the traditional methods with more recent network-based approaches.

Results

We applied a wide range of 32 different network-based machine learning models to five commonly available biomedical datasets, and evaluated their performance based on three important evaluations metrics namely AUROC, AUPR, and F1-score. We achieved this by converting link prediction problem as binary classification problem. In order to achieve this we have considered the existing links as positive example and randomly sampled negative examples from non-existant set. After experimental evaluation we found that Prone, ACT and \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$LRW_5$$\end{document}LRW5 are the top 3 best performers on all five datasets.

Conclusions

This work presents a comparative evaluation of network-based machine learning algorithms for predicting network links, with applications in the prediction of drug-target and drug–drug interactions, and applied well known network-based machine learning methods. Our work is helpful in guiding researchers in the appropriate selection of machine learning methods for pharmaceutical tasks.

Supplementary Information

The online version supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12859-021-04082-y.

Bupropion Hydrochloride Sustained Release and Diurnal Enuresis: A Previously Unreported Adverse Effect

Bupropion hydrochloride (HCl) is an antidepressant that has many different biological targets, acting as both a norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitor as well as a nicotinic antagonist. This second-generation antidepressant is available in 3 bioequivalent formulations: immediate release, sustained release, and extended release, allowing providers to customize a patient's regimen for maximum tolerability and compliance. Although bupropion HCl's safety and tolerability have been demonstrated through several clinical trials, there are still a number of adverse effects that have been reported in the literature. These include headache, agitation, tremor, and insomnia. There is also an increased risk of developing seizures during bupropion treatment. Although urinary symptoms were noted during the clinical trials, these are relatively rare adverse effects. Here we report the case of a 61-year-old man who developed diurnal enuresis during treatment with bupropion HCl sustained release. We will review the adverse effect burden associated with the use of bupropion and discuss the neuropharmacology of urinary symptoms associated with antidepressant treatment.

Combined Use of Duloxetine and Olanzapine in the Treatment of Urologic Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndromes Refractory to Conventional Treatment: A Case Report

Patients with urologic chronic pelvic pain syndromes (UCPPS) report interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome and/or chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome. The pathogenesis of these syndromes remains unclear and there is currently no standard treatment. UCPPS is, therefore, often misdiagnosed and its management is complex. The present case report involves a 62-year-old male patient with UCPPS whose main presentation is painful bladder filling and painful urgency refractory to conventional treatment with medication, which was successfully treated with the combined use of duloxetine and olanzapine. The combined use of duloxetine and olanzapine may become a new therapeutic option in the management of UCPPS.

The influence of duloxetine on detrusor overactivity in rats with depression induced by 13-cis-retinoic acid

INTRODUCTION AND HYPOTHESIS

The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of duloxetine in an animal model of detrusor overactivity induced by depression.

METHODS

After 6 weeks of 13-cis-retinoic acid administration at a dose of 1 mg/kg/day, rats were given duloxetine at a dose of 1 mg/kg. This was followed by conscious cystometry, a forced swim test, and locomotor activity measurement. The levels of corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) in the hypothalamus, amygdala and plasma were also determined.

RESULTS

Duloxetine treatment led to a reduction in detrusor overactivity symptoms induced by the retinoid. Decreases were observed in cystometric parameters including the detrusor overactivity index, and the amplitude and frequency of nonvoiding contractions, while increases were seen in bladder compliance and the volume threshold to elicit nonvoiding contractions. No statistically significant differences were found in basal pressure, threshold pressure, micturition voiding pressure, postvoid residual , volume threshold, voiding efficiency, intercontraction interval, bladder contraction duration or relaxation time. Duloxetine also reduced the immobility time to that observed in control animals, while it did not affect locomotor activity. Its effects also included lowering of the CRF levels in the hypothalamus, amygdala and plasma, which increased following the prior administration of the retinoid. The plasma level of 13-cis-retinoic acid in rats corresponded to the levels found in humans.

CONCLUSIONS

This is the first study showing the efficacy of duloxetine in an animal model of detrusor overactivity induced by depression. Further studies in patients with detrusor overactivity and coexisting depression are warranted to confirm these experimental results.