Behavioural tests
Rotational Behavior After two weeks from surgery, rats were
tested for apomorphine-induced rotational behavior (0.5 mg/kg s.c. over
a period of 45 min). Only animals showing individual mean (2 full turns
per min in the direction contralateral to the lesion side) were selected
for the study (Padovan-Neto et al. 2009). Two days after that, chronic
L-DOPA treatment was initiated.
L-DOPA-Induced dyskinesia Chronic L-DOPA treatment consisted of
rats receiving a daily oral administration of L-DOPA for 14 days. Rats
were monitored for LID using a rat dyskinesia scale (Anderson et al.,
1999; Cenci and Lundblat, 2007; and modified by Padovan-Neto et al.,
2009). Briefly, each rat was scored on a severity scale from 0 to 4
(where 0=absent, 1=occasional, 2=frequent, 3=continuous but interrupted
by sensory distraction, and 4=continuous, severe and not suppressible)
on each of the three axial, limb, and orofacial (ALO AIMs) subtypes
(once every 20 min during 180 min after L-DOPA administration. Results
are presented as the sum of ALO AIMs scores and analyzed as one item.
Also, A dyskinesia time curve was generated by plotting the L-DOPA
induced AIMs score against each monitoring time (20, 40, 60, 80, 100,
120, 140, 160, and 180 min) for an entire testing session. Animals with
a L-DOPA induced. AIMs score of >10 and severity grading of
>2 on at least one L-DOPA induced AIMs to score subtype
were selected for the behavioral analysis (Lundblad et al., 2002;
Winkler et al., 2002).