Abstract
Abstract Background. Alcohol and nicotine are commonly coabused. The search for a common core of neural, behavioral, and
genetic factors underlying addiction has been the goal of addiction
research. Purpose. Genetic predisposition to high alcohol intake
has been studied in rats by selectively breeding rats that have high
preference for alcohol. The current experiments were conducted
to determine if the level of intravenous nicotine administration for
the various lines of alcohol-preferring rats differs from that for
nonalcohol-preferring controls. Study design. Adult alcohol-na¨ıve
selectively-bred alcohol-preferring male rats from four lines (P, AA,
HAD-1, sP) and their control nonalcohol-preferring rats (NP, ANA,
LAD-1, sNP) were trained and given access to self-administer nicotine
(0.03 mg/kg/infusion). Results. The results show that the P rats selfadministered significantly more nicotine than NP rats. In contrast,
there were no significant differences in nicotine self-administration
between the sP and sNP or the AA and ANA rats. Unexpectedly,
high alcohol-drinking HAD-1 rats self-administered significantly less
nicotine than low alcohol-drinking LAD-1 rats. Conclusion. This
suggests that some genetic factors that underlie high-alcohol intake
have more general effects in promoting high nicotine intake tendencies,
while other genetic factors are more specific to only heavy drinking.
Users
Please
log in to take part in the discussion (add own reviews or comments).