Relationship Between Aquaporin-4 And Cocaine Addiction

Drug addiction should be considered as a complex disease of the central nervous system, characterized by compulsive, uncontrolled craving for a drug, its seeking and striving to get it at all cost, and its use despite obvious, serious health and life-threatening consequences. Cocaine, a dopamine (DA), norepinephrine and serotonin transporter inhibitor, is a potent stimulant drug of abuse, which can produce enduring behavioral and neurochemical changes. Acute and repeated cocaine exposure enhances animal locomotor and stereotypic behaviors. It has been reported that both acute and sensitized responses to cocaine are mediated by enhanced dopamine neurotransmission in neurons projecting from the ventral mesencephalon to the limbic forebrain, including the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and nucleus accumbens (NAc). In contrast to DA, recent evidence suggests glutamate (Glu) transmission is a primary contributor in the cocaine-induced plasticity in the NAc, a brain region known to be critical in cocaine addiction. Therefore, DA and Glu are the most important neurotransmitters in both the induction and the expression of cocaine sensitization. Consequently, there is intense interest in better understanding the neurobiology of addiction in the hope that such knowledge will lead eventually to more effective treatments.Aquaporins (AQPs) are a family of integral membrane pore proteins mediating transmembrane water movement in most cells. Several AQPs identified in the central nervous system are known to participate in the production and reabsorption of brain fluid. Aquaporin-4 (AQP4) is the...