Selank and diazepam under chronic stress: a 2017 rat study
Combining Selank with diazepam reduced anxiety-like behavior more than diazepam alone in chronically stressed rats. What that suggests, and why it calls for caution.
Published . Updated
Summaries of published research for educational discussion. Not medical advice.
Selank is a short synthetic peptide developed in Russia and registered there as a nasal spray for anxiety. It’s popular in nootropic circles because it’s described as calming without the sedation or dependence associated with benzodiazepines. A 2017 rat study looked at a practical question: what happens when Selank is combined with diazepam (Valium) under long-term stress?
What Selank is
Selank is a seven-amino-acid peptide built from tuftsin, a fragment of an antibody protein with immune-signaling roles. Its developers at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences added a short tail to the tuftsin sequence to make it last longer in the body. Research, mostly from Russian groups, links it to the GABA system (the same calming system benzodiazepines act on) and to changes in the expression of genes involved in brain signaling.
The study
The study, published in Behavioural Neurology, used the unpredictable chronic mild stress model. Over several weeks, rats face a rotating series of mild stressors, such as disrupted light cycles, damp bedding, and cage changes, which produces lasting anxiety-like and depression-like behavior. It’s a standard way to model the effect of chronic stress rather than a single frightening event.
The researchers compared stressed rats given Selank, diazepam, or the two together, measuring anxiety-like behavior with standard maze tests.
What it found
As the title states, Selank enhanced diazepam’s anti-anxiety effect in chronically stressed rats: the combination reduced anxiety-like behavior more than diazepam did alone. That fits the idea that Selank works on overlapping GABA-related pathways rather than through an entirely separate mechanism.
The finding is interesting because a peptide that strengthens a benzodiazepine’s effect could, in principle, allow lower benzodiazepine doses. It also shows that Selank and benzodiazepines interact, which is a reason for caution, not just optimism.
Limitations
- It’s a rat study. Anxiety-like behavior in a maze is a stand-in for human anxiety, not the same thing.
- The evidence base is narrow. Most Selank research comes from a small number of Russian research groups. Large, independent, placebo-controlled human trials haven’t been published.
- Interactions cut both ways. If Selank boosts the effect of a sedative in rats, combining it with benzodiazepines, alcohol, or other depressants in people deserves caution, not experimentation.
- Not approved outside Russia. Selank isn’t an approved drug in the U.S. or EU.
Correction to our earlier summary
An earlier version of this article on the previous Peptide Source site described this paper as a study of depression and cognitive impairment. The paper linked from that article is the anxiety and diazepam study summarized here, and this version has been rewritten to match it.
Sources
- Kasian A, Kolomin T, Andreeva L, et al. Peptide Selank enhances the effect of diazepam in reducing anxiety in unpredictable chronic mild stress conditions in rats. Behavioural Neurology. 2017;2017:5091027. doi:10.1155/2017/5091027