Antipsychotic Treated Rats

Animal studies and procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Efforts were made to minimize the number of animals used and any unnecessary suffering. 20 house-paired male Sprague Dawley rats (Charles River, Wilmington, MA, USA; 250g) were intramuscularly injected every three weeks with either haloperidol decanoate in sesame oil (28.5 mg/kg, 10 rats) or sesame oil only (10 rats) for a total of 12 injections. Haloperidol decanoate is a first-generation, long-acting antipsychotic that is administered monthly to patients. The goal of this rat study was to emulate chronic antipsychotic treatment used in patients. The dose and duration of treatment was converted from patient-appropriate doses to rat-appropriate doses to recapitulate chronic treatment with typical antipsychotics, and has been previously been described [4, 5]. The animals were killed by decapitation, and the brains were immediately harvested, dissected, and stored at −80°C.