Abstract: Intraperitoneal injection of reserpine (4, 6 or 8 mg/kg) increased floating time in the Porsolt swim test in a dose-and time-dependent manner in rats. Although such behavioral depression usually is attributed to drug-induced depletion of brain monoamines, the outcome might be more directly related to brain adenosine signaling associated neuronal overactivation or brain cytokine induction following excitotoxic tissue damage. We addressed these possibilities by pretreating rats with caffeine (7 mg/kg), a high affinity adenosine receptor antagonist, prior to reserpine treatment (6 mg/kg). Caffeine partially reversed the ensuing behavioral depression as measured in the Prosolt swim test conducted 1, 24 and 72 hours after reserpine treatment. Further investigation has also been done to determine the subtype of adenosine receptor, which should mediate reserpine’s effect. The results showed that adenosine A2 receptor antagonist (DMPX) and A2a antagonist (CSC) reversed the reserpine-induced behavioral depression dose-dependently. These results suggest that adenosine mediates reserpine-induced depression via adenosine A2a receptor and provide evidence that adenosine plays a crucial role in mediating behavioral depression, which will benefit in understanding the mechanism of depression and finding new drug for anti-depressant treatment

Key words: reserpine behavioral depression adenosine antagonist