Leave Extract from Mitragyna speciosa (Korth.) Havil. Attenuates Methamphetamine Conditioned Place Preference of Mice

Abstract

Methamphetamine (METH) is a psychostimulant drug that can induce rewarding behaviors. Although its mechanism acting on the central nervous system has been proposed, there is no evidence reported about the local field potential (LFP) pattern in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) in response to METH dependence. The first experiment was conducted to record and analyze LFP in the BLA in METH conditioned place preference (CPP). The results exposed that addition-related mice suppressed BLA theta and alpha power but enhanced theta-gamma coupling. These changes were hypothesized to involve stress response, dopamine release, and serotonin clearance. All these physiological alterations may be reversed by the effects of kratom leave extract. Mitragyna speciosa (Korth.) Havil. locally called kratom (KT) is a medicinal plant. Its leave extract has been proposed to attenuate many withdrawal symptoms induced by the abuse of drugs. However, using KT leaves on METH-induced CPP remained largely unexplored. This experiment aimed to examine animal behaviors as well as LFP patterns in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), hippocampus (HP), and the nucleus accumbens (NAc) in repones KT leave extract treatment in METH CPP mice. The results revealed that KT leaves extract at 80 mg/kg effectively ameliorated the CPP score via attenuating VTA delta power, HP delta power, and NAc gamma I power. Simultaneously, it also changes the pattern of brain connectivity expressed as coherence by lowing gamma I coherence in the VTA-NAc and HP-NAc axes but escalating alpha coherence in the VTA-HP axis. Altogether, the evidence-based study may suggest that KT leave extract may be suitable to develop as an alternative drug for METH craving therapy.