Muscarinic supersensitivity: a possible model for the sleep disturbance of primary depression?
The sleep changes induced in normal volunteers following the administration of scopolamine on 3 consecutive mornings resemble many of the abnormalities observed in the sleep of patients with primary depression: increased sleep latency and reduced rapid eye movement (REM) latency, total sleep time, and sleep efficiency. Furthermore, in a multivariate discriminant analysis--previously shown to distinguish the sleep records of depresed patients from those of normal controls and insomniac patients--the records from baseline nights were selected as normal and those after scopolamine as predominately depressed. Those observations suggest to us that muscarinic supersensitivity in normals may function as a pharmacological model for the sleep disturbances of depression.
D003863:Depression / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D011950:Receptors, Cholinergic / Q000187:drug effects*; D011976:Receptors, Muscarinic / Q000187:drug effects*; D012601:Scopolamine / Q000494:pharmacology*; D012895:Sleep, REM / Q000187:drug effects*
D011950:Receptors, Cholinergic; D011976:Receptors, Muscarinic; D012601:Scopolamine