ArticlesHigh Dose Pimozide Does Not Block Amphetamine-Induced Euphoria in Normal Volunteers
Section snippets
Subjects
Fifteen normal, healthy males (N = 6) and females (N = 9) between the ages of 21 and 35 were recruited from the University of Chicago community. Non-smokers who consumed at least one alcoholic beverage per week came to the laboratory for a physical examination, electrocardiogram (ECG), and face-to-face psychiatric interview. Cigarette smokers were excluded from the study to minimize potential interactions between nicotine and the study drugs, and to eliminate the possibility that smoking
Subject Characteristics
Three of the original 15 subjects (2 males and 1 female) experienced unpleasant side effects from pimozide and dropped out of the study (see below). The remaining 12 subjects (5 males and 7 females) were a mean age of 24.7 years old, and drank an average of 4.1 alcoholic beverages per week (range = 1-10). In general, subjects were only occasional users of recreational drugs, typically marijuana.
d-Amphetamine
d-Amphetamine produced robust and dose-related effects on a number of measures when administered
Discussion
The results of the study suggest that the lack of effect of pimozide in our previous studies was not due to the doses of pimozide tested. Even though the dose of pimozide used in this study (8 mg) produced significant effects when administered alone (e.g., decreases in Elation, Positive Mood, and Vigor, and increases in Confusion), it did not consistently antagonize responses to d-amphetamine. Therefore, even a clearly behaviorally active dose of pimozide did not attenuate responses to a low or
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA02812). The authors wish to thank Sara Hartman for her help in subject recruitment and Matthew Clark and Angela Justice for their diligence in data entry and preparation. The authors are also grateful to Dr. Jed E. Rose for his suggestions regarding data analysis.
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