Effects of antidepressants on the conformation of phospholipid headgroups studied by solid-state NMR

The effect of tricyclic antidepressants (TCA) on phospholipid bilayer structure and dynamics was studied to provide insight into the mechanism of TCA-induced intracellular accumulation of lipids (known as lipidosis). Specifically we asked if the lipid-TCA interaction was TCA or lipid specific and if such physical interactions could contribute to lipidosis. These interactions were probed in multilamellar vesicles and mechanically oriented bilayers of mixed phosphatidylcholine-phosphatidylglycerol (PC-PG) phospholipids using ³¹P and ¹⁴N solid-state NMR techniques. Changes in bilayer architecture in the presence of TCAs were observed to be dependent on the TCA's effective charge and steric constraints. The results further show that desipramine and imipramine evoke distinguishable changes on the membrane surface, particularly on the headgroup order, conformation and dynamics of phospholipids. Desipramine increases the disorder of the choline site at the phosphatidylcholine headgroup while leaving the conformation and dynamics of the phosphate region largely unchanged. Incorporation of imipramine changes both lipid headgroup conformation and dynamics. Our results suggest that a correlation between TCA-induced changes in bilayer architecture and the ability of these compounds to induce lipidosis is, however, not straightforward as imipramine was shown to induce more dramatic changes in bilayer conformation and dynamics than desipramine. The use of ¹⁴N as a probe was instrumental in arriving at the presented conclusions.