Characterization of Extracellular Histamine in the Striatum and Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis of the Rat: An In Vivo Microdialysis Study

The intracerebral microdialysis technique, coupled with a sensitive radioenzymatic assay, was employed to study histamine release in the striatum and in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) in conscious, freely moving rats. In these brain regions, extracellular histamine concentrations decreased by 20% when calcium was omitted from the perfusion solution. Extracellular histamine was insensitive to the addition of tetrodotoxin to the perfusion medium. In striatum, extracellular histamine concentrations declined in an apparent biexponential manner after the administration of alpha-fluoromethylhistidine, an inhibitor of histamine synthesis. The half-lives for the disappearance of histamine were 32 min and 7.7 h, indicating the presence of at least two histamine pools. Histidine loading resulted in a nearly twofold increase in histamine outflow in striatum. In the BNST, yohimbine increased the extracellular histamine content by 50%, suggesting that histamine release is subject to alpha 2-adrenergic regulation in vivo. The extent to which histamine detected in cerebral microdialysis samples is of neurogenic origin remains to be established.