Study results appear in the online version of Neuropsychopharmacology.
Nicotine is the primary chemical in cigarette smoke that causes addiction, yet when tested in animal studies, the draw of nicotine alone appears to be relatively weak compared to other abused drugs. Surprised by this phenomenon, UCI researchers conducted a series of studies in rodents to determine whether nicotine may interact with some of the other 4,000 components of tobacco smoke to enhance addictiveness.
"We chose to study acetaldehyde because it is a major component of tobacco smoke, present in a one-to-two ratio to nicotine," said James Belluzzi, lead researcher and adjunct professor of pharmacology in the UCI College of Medicine. "Additionally, there is evidence that acetaldehyde may play a role in alcohol addiction."
Belluzzi, researcher Ruihua Wang and Frances Leslie, professor of pharmacology and TTURC director, evaluated possible acetaldehyde and nicotine interactions in a rigorous self-administration test. Adolescent and adult male rats were tested in a procedure during which each nose poke by the rodents delivered acetaldehyde or nicotine, a combination of both drugs, or saline.
Adolescent animals quickly learned to self-administer the nicotine-acetaldehyde combination significantly more than saline or either drug alone. Furthermore, young adolescents were more responsive to the drug combination than older adolescents.
When adult animals were tested in identical experiments, they did not self-administer the nicotin
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Contact: Tom Vasich
tmvasich@uci.edu
949-824-6455
University of California - Irvine
28-Oct-2004