Partial Reversal of Phencyclidine-Induced Impairment of Prepulse Inhibition by Secretin

Background Secretin is a “gut-brain” peptide whose neural function is as yet poorly understood. Several clinical studies have reported modestly increased social interaction in autistic children following intravenous secretin administration. Very recently secretin also was administered to schizophrenic patients and found to increase social interaction in some individuals. Methods In light of this finding, we assessed the ability of secretin to reverse phencyclidine- (PCP) induced impairment in prepulse inhibition (PPI), a leading animal model of sensorimotor gating deficits in schizophrenia. Results Similar to atypical antipsychotics, secretin (1, 3, 10, 30, and 100 μg/kg) partially and dose-dependently reversed the PCP-induced deficit in PPI without significantly affecting baseline startle when administered intraperitoneally (IP) 10 minutes following IP administration of PCP (3 mg/kg). Conclusions This finding may be relevant to observations of antipsychotic efficacy of secretin in schizophrenic patients as well as our previous report that systemically administered secretin is capable of modulating conditioned fear, even at quite low doses.