title: Intravenous self-administration of alcohol in rats-problems with translation to humans.
abstract: Alcohol is consumed orally by humans, and oral self-administration has been successfully modeled in laboratory animals. Over the last several years, attempts have been made to develop a procedure for the reliable intravenous (IV) self-administration of alcohol in rodents. IV self-administration would provide a better tool for investigating neurobiological mechanisms of alcohol reinforcement and dependence because confounding factors associated with oral self-administration, such as variations in orosensory sensitivity to alcohol and/or its absorption, are avoided. A review of the literature shows that rats, mice and non-human primates can initiate and maintain IV self-administration of alcohol. However, there are 50- to 100-fold interspecies differences in the reported alcohol infusion doses required. Most surprising is that the infusion dose (1-2 mg/kg) that reliably maintains IV alcohol self-administration in rats results in total alcohol intakes of only 20-25 mg/kg/hour, which are unlikely to have significant pharmacological effects. The evidence to support IV self-administration of such low doses of alcohol in rats as well as the potential biological mechanisms underlying such self-administration are discussed. The minute amounts of alcohol shown to reliably maintain IV self-administration behavior in rats challenge the relationship between their blood alcohol levels and the rewarding and reinforcing effects of alcohol.
authors.affiliation: Neurobiology of Alcohol Laboratory, Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada.|Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Toronto, Canada.|Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Canada.
authors.forename: Anh D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Lê
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Toronto, Canada.|Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Research Division, Canada.
authors.forename: Harold
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kalant
mesh_terms: D000437:Alcoholism / Q000097:blood*; D000818:Animals; D000067401:Blood Alcohol Content; D002492:Central Nervous System Depressants / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000097:blood*; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D000431:Ethanol / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000097:blood*; D006801:Humans; D007262:Infusions, Intravenous; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D012646:Self Administration
chemical_list: D000067401:Blood Alcohol Content; D002492:Central Nervous System Depressants; D000431:Ethanol
keywords: Alcohol; intravenous self-administration