Evaluation of the age-related prepulse inhibition (PPİ) changes

Schizophrenia is an important neuro-psychiatric disorder with positive, negative and cognitive symptoms. The prevalence of schizophrenia in men and women is equal. In men, the age of onset is usually younger than that in women. The incidence of the disease, which occurs frequently in the developmental ages of adulthood is the highest between 15 and 25 years of age. In this study, rats were grouped as "low inhibited" and "high inhibited" according to their basal inhibition values by using Prepulse Inhibition (PPI) which is the most common method in schizophrenia studies and time-dependent responses of the groups were investigated. Acute and subchronic (8 days) antipsychotic was injected to the rats after the time-dependent PPI responses. Atypical antipsychotic responses were measured separately in both low and high inhibition groups after both acute and subchronic injections. After subchronic injection, weekly and two-week follow-up measurements were performed to observe the efficacy of treatment. Male Sprague Dawley and Wistar Albino rats at postnatal eight weeks were used in the study. The time dependent PPI responses of rats divided into low and high inhibition basal groups were followed. Significant differences were obtained between the groups in which PPI responses were measured to be time-dependent. After time dependent measurements, clozapine (5 mg/kg), apomorphine (1 mg/kg) and MK-801 (0,1 mg/kg) were used to examine the effect of pharmacological agents on the groups. In conclusion, our findings indicate that PPI distruption in young adolescence continues in a consistent way depending on age variable. Our data suggest that this distruption in PPI can be detected in the early period depending on the age variable, that groups at risk for schizophrenia can be identified and their responses to applicable treatments can be examined.