This article demonstrates that rats treated with vitamin C (ascorbate) had similar behavior to those treated with the tranquilizer haloperidol, but that vitamin C and the tranquilizer acted through two different mechanisms.
It is known that in animals, vitamin C has similar effects as the tranquilizer haloperidol, so some researchers think that vitamin C and haloperidol act through similar mechanisms. In this study, the authors test this idea. First they show that rats exposed to a dopamine agonist (a dopamine-like compound) will respond with more sniffing behavior if they have been treated with low-dose vitamin C or haloperidol as compared to rats treated with placebo. Then, they examine the brains of these rats to see if the treatments caused changes in dopamine receptors. They found that rats treated with haloperidol alone had more dopamine receptors compared to rats treated with placebo, but that rats treated with vitamin C alone did not. The authors conclude that even though vitamin C and haloperidol result in similar behavioral effects, they do not affect the dopamine system in the same way.
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