NeuropharmacologySelective increases in regional brain glucocorticoid: A novel effect of chronic alcohol
Section snippets
Animals
Mice of TO (outbred) and C57/BL10 strains, were aged 6–8 weeks at start of experiments and Hooded Lister rats aged 2 months at start. Animals were bred in house, on reverse phase lighting in group housing from birth (lights on 20:00 h to 08:00 h). Housing was in groups of 8 to 10 for mice and 3 to 4 for rats. All animals were male except those for which results are illustrated in Fig. 2a and 2b.
Alcohol treatments
In order to establish the generality of the changes, several well-established chronic alcohol
Brain corticosterone concentrations: male TO mice given alcohol via a liquid diet
During the alcohol consumption (i.e. when there was no alcohol withdrawal) there were no significant differences between chronic alcohol and controls in either brain or plasma corticosterone levels (Fig. 1a). Three weeks alcohol liquid diet, then 6 days abstinence from alcohol, however, resulted in significantly raised concentrations of corticosterone in the hippocampus and the striatum of male TO strain mice, but not the cerebral cortex (Fig. 1b). Plasma corticosterone concentrations were
Discussion
When measurements were made during alcohol consumption, the regional brain concentrations appeared to parallel the plasma levels, increases being observed in both plasma and brains of alcohol-treated animals compared with controls. After alcohol withdrawal, however, a dissociation was seen between brain and plasma corticosterone concentrations. Plasma corticosterone levels rose during the first few hours after alcohol withdrawal (as expected from previous studies, Tabakoff et al., 1978) but
Acknowledgments
We thank the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for financial support (R01 AA13932).
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