BASELINE LOCOMOTOR ACTIVITY AND PRENATAL ETHANOL PREDICT ETHANOL INTAKE IN PREWEANLING HETEROGENEOUS RATS

MILLER, S.; ARIAS, C.; SPEAR, N.E.

Congreso; International society for Developmental Psychobiology; 2008

Adult rats with higher locomotor activity to a novel environment (?high responders?; HR) respond differently to drugs of abuse than low responders (LR). HR are more sensitive to stimulating effects psychoactive drugs, and tend to ingest more ethanol than LR. There is not much information about these phenotypes during early development. In addition, clinical and preclinical studies have shown that prenatal ethanol is a good predictor of ethanol use and abuse later in life. In the present study we analyzed the interaction between prenatal ethanol and baseline activity levels upon ethanol consumption during infancy. Dams were administered water or 2 g/kg ethanol intragastrically from gestation day 17 (G17) through G20. On postnatal day 13 (P13) pups were given a water intake test followed by ethanol intake tests on P14 and P15. Baseline activity was measured before each intake test. Infants with prenatal exposure to ethanol consumed more ethanol than infants exposed to water. There were no differences in water consumption. Furthermore, HR rats consumed more ethanol than LR rats though again no differences in consumption were evident with water. HR and LR rats were equally distributed across prenatal treatments. The present data confirms that prenatal ethanol enhances ethanol intake in preweanling rats, and also indicates that baseline activity can be a good predictor of ethanol response during early ontogeny. The possibility that early detection of behavioral phenotypes can predict particular responses to drugs of abuse would be beneficial for early intervention.