How to achieve chronic intravenous drug self-administration in mice.
BACKGROUND
Self-administration, the best animal model of drug addiction, requires implantation of indwelling jugular catheters. Surgical procedures in mice, the most common species for transgenic modeling, are difficult owing to size and scale. The goal of this paper was to describe how to achieve successful intravenous drug self-administration in mice.


METHODS
The surgical and self-administration training procedures developed for rats and other species have been adopted for mice and described in a step-by-step manner with reference to sources for equipment, materials, and parts.


RESULTS
The method can be used for studying self-administration behavior in freely moving mice up to 4 weeks. The relatively quick loss of catheter patency was due to growth of neointima tissue.


CONCLUSIONS
Drug self-administration is achievable in mice, and the model is limited only by eventual loss of catheter patency, a process probably triggered by mechanical damage of the endothelium, by the effect of drug injections, or a combination of these factors.
Institute of Pharmacology, Pavlov Medical University, St. Petersburg, 197022 Russia.
Vladimir S
VS
Chistyakov
Vladimir L
VL
Tsibulsky
D000818:Animals; D002408:Catheters, Indwelling; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D004867:Equipment Design; D013287:Illicit Drugs / Q000494:pharmacology*; D007601:Jugular Veins / Q000601:surgery; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D012646:Self Administration / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D015819:Substance Abuse, Intravenous / Q000503:physiopathology*
D013287:Illicit Drugs