A method for analyzing strain differences in acquisition of IV cocaine self-administration in mice.
The techniques currently available for studying drug self-administration in animals offer the unique opportunity to carry out micro-analysis of initial episodes of drug use which are extremely difficult to obtain for human subjects. Nonetheless, traditional self-administration techniques do not allow a cost-effective output of large sample sizes needed for genetic analysis. Additionally, the statistical techniques that allow the integration of within-subject temporal data with genetic information are scant. We therefore propose a two-stage method for analyzing strain differences in dynamic phenotypes for a high-throughput version of the self-administration procedure. On a first phenotype-refinement stage, a change-point algorithm (Gallistel et al. (2004) Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 101:13124-13131) was used to separate individual drug self-administration response curves into three distinct components. In a second stage, strains differences in these indexes were assessed. This two-stage approach is illustrated with drug self-administration data and through a computer simulation.
Vargas-Irwin
Cristina
C
Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298-0126 USA. cvargasirwin@vcu.edu
van den Oord
Edwin J C G
EJ
Beardsley
Patrick M
PM
Robles
J R
JR
D000818:Animals; D003042:Cocaine / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D019970:Cocaine-Related Disorders / Q000235:genetics*; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008807:Mice, Inbred BALB C; D008813:Mice, Inbred ICR; D011336:Probability; D012646:Self Administration; D013045:Species Specificity
D003042:Cocaine