Joint administration of sub-threshold doses of the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor donepezil with those of the NMDA receptor antagonist ketamine improved rats' recognition memory abilities.
Neuroscience letters – November 20, 2024
Source: PubMed
Summary
Combining low doses of two memory-affecting drugs shows promise for enhancing memory function. When researchers paired small amounts of donepezil (an Alzheimer's medication) with ketamine (known for treating depression), rats showed significant improvements in their recognition memory. The combined treatment helped them better remember both object details and spatial locations, suggesting a potential new approach for treating memory disorders.
Abstract
Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a serious progressive neurodegenerative illness conducting to the decay of cognitive functions. A few drugs have been approved for the therapy of AD, including the acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs) like donepezil. Their efficiency, however, is modest and their application is associated with toxicity. Recently, the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist ketamine, a rapidly acting antidepressant, has been proposed as a potential agent for the treatment of AD. The present study was designed to investigate the effects exerted by the combination of sub-threshold doses of donepezil with those of ketamine on rats' recognition memory abilities. For these experiments, the object recognition task (ORT) and the object location task (OLT), two procedures assessing non-spatial and spatial recognition memory respectively in rodents were used. Post-training acute administration of inactive doses of donepezil (0.3 mg/kg) and ketamine (1 mg/kg) counteracted non-spatial and spatial recognition memory impairments. The present findings, although preliminary, propose that the combined administration of ketamine and donepezil could represent a new strategy for the therapy of memory disorders, a common feature of AD patients.