Protection against haloperidol by catatoxic steroids

✍ Scribed by Hans Selye; Sandor Szabo

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1972
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 276 KB
• Volume: 24
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0033-3158
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00402537

✦ Synopsis

Experiments on rats show that the effect of haloperidol upon central nervous system activity is abolished or inhibited by pregnenolone-16a-carbonitrile (PCN), "Catatoxic Steroid Number 1" (CS-1), ethylestrenol, spironolactone, norbolethone, oxandrolone, prednisolone and, to a Iesser extent, by progesterone. On the other hand, triameinolone and thyroxine actually increase the sensitivity of the rat to haloperidol so that normally well-tolerated doses induce a high mortality.

Since the protective effect of the abeve-mentioned steroids against most toxicants is ascribed to hepatic microsomal enzyme induction, i~ is of special interest that phenobarbital--one of the most potent nonsteroidal hepatic microsomal enzyme inducers--fails to protect the rat against haloperidol. ~hese findings confirm earlier observations which showed that there are great qualitative differences between the protective effects of various enzyme inducers upon diverse substrates.