Several antihypertensive drugs belonging to the group of ACE inhibitors have been selected for testing their nootropic activity based on a computer-aided prediction of their biological activity spectra using the PASS computer program package. Experiments were conducted on mice by the spontaneous orientation test (patrolling behavior) in a cross-maze. It was found that perindopril at a dose of 1 mg/kg in addition to quinapril and monopril at a dose of 10 mg/kg improved the patrolling behavior in the cross-maze test. This effect is similar to the effects of the standard nootropic drugs piracetam and meclofenoxate (at doses of 300 and 120 mg/kg, respectively). The observed nootropic effect of some ACE inhibitors is likely to be unrelated to their antihypertensive effect since the nootropic action took place only at relatively low doses of perindopril, quinapril, and monopril and was not observed with further increase of the dose. The identification of nootropic action of antihypertensive drugs that are commonly used in clinical practice leads to their new clinical applications with allowance for the relevant idiosyncrasies of patients.
Pharmaceut. Chem. J., 2012, 45 (10), 605-611.