Posted by SLS on August 1, 2012, at 1:12:57
In reply to Abilify and OCD: SLS, posted by phidippus on July 31, 2012, at 21:35:39
> I recently started taking 10 mg of Abilify and my OCD has come under exquisite control.
>
> Now, inreased dopamanergic activity is present in the nucleus acumbens in most folk with OCD. Abilify is a d2/d3 partial agonist-what's it doing to dopamine activity in my nucleus acumbens?
>
> Eric
This is one of those questions about Abilify that I like to defer to Stephen Stahl and his conceptualization of how it acts as a dopamine system stabilizer (DSS), a dynamic unique among available neuroleptic antipsychotics (although cariprazine would be the second of these drugs if it gets approved by the US FDA this year). Stahl's thoughts are that Abilify, through its partial D2/D3 receptor agonism, acts more as a postsynaptic antagonist when synaptic concentrations of DA are high, and an agonist when concentrations are low. One idea I have is that this might be related to the ability of these DA receptors to switch from a low-affinity state to a high-affinity state via conformational change. I really don't know if anyone has proposed this as a mechanism yet.Here are some reviews that help explain the DSS actions of Abilify (aripiprazole):
jpet.aspetjournals.org/content/302/1/381.full.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12065741
Several open-label studies that I came across indicated that Abilify augmentation of SRIs can improve OCD.
- ScottSome see things as they are and ask why.
I dream of things that never were and ask why not.- George Bernard Shaw
poster:SLS
thread:1022527
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120718/msgs/1022538.html