Avaliação farmacológica da Ayahuasca em modelos animais de memória e adicção à morfina

Abstract

Ayahuasca is a psychedelic beverage obtained from the decoction of Banisteriopsis caapi Linnaeus, 1759, and Psycotria viridis Spruce, 1849, whose synergy has the action of β - carbolines inhibiting monoamine oxidase (MAO) and N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) serotonin agonist, withanti-addict effect on morphine. The objective of this study was to analyze the potential pharmacological and toxicological aspects of ayahuasca in memory and addiction to morphine, aiming at the development of a herbal medicine. Initially, lyophilization was performed, then it was allowed to validate amethodology for identifying the components of interest in the sampleby high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Groups of Swiss mice were treated with genotoxicity, followed by assessment of conditioned place preference (CPP) and toxicological tests, acute for single dose test, according to the LD50 and subchronic, with biochemical analysis (OECD-423/2001). The results obtained in the chromatographic method proposed the retention of the contiguous peaks for the compound’s specific time and wavelength. The data obtained with analysis of variance (ANOVA) did not induce damage to significance of 5% for the Tukey test, making the extract not genotoxic, however it is mutagenic for the frequency of micronuclei. The conditioned place preference test did not induce conditioning to thepairing and confirmed an anti-addict effect to morphine. There were no observed signs of toxicity to acute and subchronic tests, with adequate blood count levels, and a significant reduction in triglycerides. Given the scope and correlations of the tests, it implies that the herbal medicinecan be safe.