Abstract:
Depression is a disease associated with feelings of sadness and symptoms such as
changes in sleep patterns, appetite, concentration and feelings of hopelessness.
Depressive disorders can be experienced by adults and children can also
experience depression regardless of social class. Pharmacological therapy for
depressive disorders is a drug from the class of antidepressants. The method
commonly used for antidepressant screening is the Forced Swim Test (FST). This
study aims to determine the antidepressant activity of n-hexane extract of nutmeg
through the FST method in an acute manner. FST is used because it is an in vivo
method which can be a special test in basic and pre-clinical research. The
injection was carried out intraperitoneally 1 hour before FST at a dose of 50
mg/kg and the control group was only injected with 0.9% saline. The n-hexane
extract 50 mg/kg of nutmeg seed had no potential as an antidepressant as
evidenced by the decrease in immobility time which was not significantly
different from the control.
