Relation Among Potential Predictors Of Drug Abuse Risk In Rats

Animal models have been used to investigate behavioral processes and mechanisms that underlie addiction. A variety of measures have been developed for rats that are modest predictors of drug abuse risk. The purpose of this pilot study was to begin to assess whether several established and potential measures of drug abuse vulnerability were correlated. The subjects were eight adult male Wistar rats. The rats were run on procedures that yielded measures of anxiety, sensation seeking, short term responsive to acutely administered drug, and sensitivity to conditioned stimuli. These measures were correlated with a potential new measure of drug abuse vulnerability—withdrawal from acutely administered drug. All measures produced considerable individual differences. The pattern of trends in correlations provided some evidence that withdrawal from acutely administered drug may be a predictor of drug abuse vulnerability. The possibility that the withdrawal measure may be a novel drug-vulnerability phenotype deserves further study