Pharmacological Properties of Traditional Medicines. XXVI. Effects of Sansohnin-to ( ?? ?? ?? ?? ) on Pentobarbital Sleep in Stressed Mice

Abstract

We investigated the effect of Sansohnin-to ( ?? ?? ?? ??, SAT) on changes of duration in sodium pentobarbital (PB)-induced sleeping time caused by five types of stress.SAT reevrsed shortened PB sleep in repeated cold stress or 45 min-restraint stress tests and the prolonged PB sleep in 120 min-restraint stress. SAT did not reverse the shortened PB sleep in the specific stress state caused by an alternating rhythm in temperature stress or social isolation stress. In addition, SAT influenced both shortened PB sleep in 45 min-restraint stress and prolonged PB sleep in 120 min-restraint stress. SAT had no effect on PB sleep in unstressed control mice. These findings suggest that SAT has unusual activity, different from synthetic narcoleptics such as benzodiazepine. This is because SAT had no effect on PB sleep in unstressed mice, and it reverses stress-induced decrease and/or increase in PB sleep by improving stress-induced functional changes in the central nervous system, rather than by acting like a synthetic hypnotic on the γ-aminobutyric acid_A (GABA_A) receptor.