Avaliação da ansiedade em ratos jovens tratados com oxandrolona em dose semelhante à terapêutica e dose de abuso

Abstract

Oxandrolone (OXA) is an androgenic anabolic steroid (AAS) used in clinical practice for the treatment of growth disorders in children (or during childhood) and has been used in the form of abuse. Due to the lack of knowledge about the behavioral effects of OXA, particularly in young and abusive use, our hypothesis is that its use in an abusive dose can alter anxious behavior in young rats, but does not show a change in dose similar to therapeutic, involving antioxidant mechanisms, inflammation and alterations in the dopaminergic pathways. For that, male wistar rats aged 30 days were treated with oxandrolone (TD, 2.5mg / kg / day and AD: 37.5mg / kg / day) or vehicle (CON, carboxymethylcellulose 0.5% 0.1ml / day) via gavage for 4 weeks. After the treatment period the animals were submitted to behavioral tests of Elevate Plus Maze and Open Field and biochemical tests. Both groups showed anxious behavior, but surprisingly with more changes in the therapeutic dose than abusive dose. Alterations related to the antioxidative system were observed only in the hippocampus and differed with the treatment dose being altered only in the TD group. The expression of the dopamine receptor showed a tendency to increase in the abusive dose. The present study demonstrated that oxandrolone promotes anxiety like behavior in rats, both at the therapeutic and abusive doses, involving changes in the antioxidant pathway and with a tendency to increase the dopamine receptor in the hippocampus.