Objective: Studies related to mechanism of action of antipsychotic drugs are being gone on and still some studies are carried out whether these drugs might lead to structural changes in brain and whether these changes might be associated with extrapyramidal symptoms .for this purpose, histologic examination of corpus striatum of rabbits being administered haloperidol was aimed.

Method: Thirty rabbits are included in this study. Haloperidol at a dose of 3mg/kg/day was given intramuscularly to 15 of the animals and only lactate at a some dose was given intramuscularly to the remaining animals for 1 month. At the end of one month, striatal region of each animal was evaluated on light microscopy. Results: There was a significant increase in the number of ischemic cells in the haloperidol group when compared the control group (p<0.05).

Discussions: That haloperidol-like antipsychotic decrease dopaminergic activity might be related to via ischemic changes they produced in dopaminergic neurons of corpus striatum. In the light of these data, we think that there may be structural changes during neuroleptic use in clinics. This condition must be kept in mind.