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Lithium promotes entrainment of rats to long circadian light-dark cycles
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Lithium promotes entrainment of rats to long circadian light-dark cycles

Donald L. McEachron, Daniel F. Kripke and V.Grant Wyborney
Psychiatry research, v 5(1), pp 1-9
1981
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0165-1781(81)90055-X
PMID: 6792648
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel

Abstract

Circadian activity rhythm depression lithium mania
Manic-depressive patients may have an endogenous circadian oscillator (about 24-hour clock) which runs too fast or which seeks too advanced or early a phase. Lithium salts are a major treatment for manic-depressive and may work by showing this overly fast clock. Previous experiments with blinded rats demonstrated that lithium could delay free-running circadian rhythms. In this experiment, male rats were exposed to 27- and 28-hour light-dark cycles which were too long to synchronize the rhythms of control animals. In these control animals, the interaction of a faster (about 24-hour) internal rhythm with a slower light-dark cycle produced a beating interaction. Cyclic variations in activity were observed as a result. Measurement of wheel-running activity indicated that its circadian rhythm was significantly slowed in lithium-fed animals and became synchronized with the light-dark cycle. This illustrates and supports the hypothesis that an action of lithium may be to delay and resynchronize overly fast circadian rhythms.

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20 citations in Web of Science
17 citations in Scopus

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Psychiatry
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