CNS pharmacology of gangliosides.

This chapter describes the actions of gangliosides on the central nervous system (CNS) in vivo, the effective doses, and their penetration into the brain. It is demonstrated that exogenous gangliosides could reduce the injury and facilitate the recovery in animals in which different CNS areas were damaged by mechanical and electrolytic lesions, neurotoxin administration, and ischemia. A few studies have compared different treatment schedules using gangliosides. According to the type of lesion placed in the brain, and of the enzyme, function and behavior investigated, improvement and recovery have been observed after a treatment as short as 2–4 days or as long as 76 days. In most experiments, a treatment of 2–3 weeks seems necessary to achieve a clear cut recovery. Considerations on the mechanism of action and therapeutic applications are stem from the analysis of the actions. Most of the experiments on CNS have been carried out with the monosialoganglioside GM1. In some cases, a mixture of gangliosides including GM1 (21%), GD1a (39.7%), GDlb (16%), and GTI (19%) has been used. Recently, the GMI inner ester AGF2 has also been used.