EVALUATION OF ANTIPSYCHOTIC ACTIVITY OF ETHANOLIC EXTRACT OF NARDOSTACHYS JATAMANSI ON WISTAR ALBINO RAT

An increased inclination has been observed for the use of herbal drugs in chronic and incurable diseases. Treatment of psychiatric diseases like Schizophrenia is largely palliative and more importantly a prominent adverse effect prevails with the majority of antipsychotic drugs, which are the extrapyramidal motor disorders.  This study was a trial to evaluate the neuroleptic activity of the ethanolic extracts of Nardostachys Jatamansi with different antipsychotic animal models.  Two doses of the extract (100 and 200mg/kg) were used for this study with 5 different animal models. After that, the concentration of the dopamine neurotransmitter was estimated in two different regions of the brain viz. Frontal cortex and Striatum. The result of the study indicated a significant reduction of amphetamine induced stereotype and conditioned avoidance response for  the extracts compared with the control group, but did not have any  significant effect in phencyclidine induced locomotor activity and social interaction activity. However the extract showed minor signs of catalepsy compared to the control group. The study also revealed that the neuroleptic effect was due to the reduction of the dopamine concentration in the frontal cortex region of the rat brain. The results largely pointed out the fact that the extract may be having the property to alleviate the positive symptoms of Schizophrenia by reducing the dopamine levels of dopaminergic neurons of the brain. The estimation of dopamine in the two major regions of brain indicated the alteration of dopamine levels was the reason for the antipsychotic activity as demonstrated by the different animal models.