Effect of the 5HT2 antagonist ritanserin on food intake and on 5HT-induced anorexia in the rat.

The present study investigated the effect on the rat's eating behavior of the new selective 5HT2 antagonist ritanserin. The results obtained indicate that: single subcutaneous (SC) injection of ritanserin, at doses between 0.1 and 1 mg/kg b.wt., neither elicits food intake in sated rats, nor increases the intake induced by food deprivation; subchronic SC treatment (15 days) with 0.1 mg/kg does not increase food intake nor body weight gain; subchronic SC treatment with high doses, 1 or 10 mg/kg, produces small and transient increases in food intake without affecting body weight gain. When ritanserin was tested for its ability to block the anorectic effect of exogenous 5HT, it inhibited the effect of intraperitoneal (IP) 5HT, but proved to be completely inactive versus the effect of 5HT injected into the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus, which is highly sensitive to this effect of 5HT. This last finding suggests that the anorectic action of central endogenous 5HT is also not blocked by ritanserin, thus proposing a reasonable explanation for the absence of orexigenic effect following its administration. Moreover, it suggests that in rats the hypothalamic receptors mediating the effect of 5HT on eating behavior are different from the 5HT2 of the frontal cortex which have been shown to be completely blocked by ritanserin under the experimental conditions employed in our study.