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HPA Axis Activation by Ethanol Dependence in Adult and Adolescent Rats
Abstract
Alcoholism is a disorder marked by cycles of heavy drinking and chronic relapse, and
adolescents are an age cohort particularly susceptible to consuming large amounts
of alcohol, placing them at high risk for developing an alcohol use disorder. Adolescent
humans and rats voluntarily consume more alcohol than their adult counterparts, suggesting
that younger consumers of alcohol may be less sensitive to its aversive effects, which
are regulated by the function of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress axis.
While HPA axis dysfunction resulting from ethanol exposure has been extensively studied
in adult animals, what happens in the adolescent brain remains largely unclear. In
this study, chronic injections of ethanol was used to model alcohol dependence in
adult and adolescent rats, and post-withdrawal anxiety behaviors were measured using
light-dark box testing. Furthermore, corticosterone (CORT) release during treatment
and after withdrawal was measured by collecting fecal and plasma samples from adults
and adolescents. It was found that adults, but not adolescents, exhibit significant
anxiety-like behavior following chronic ethanol withdrawal. Additionally, while the
process of chronic ethanol treatment elicits an increase in day-by-day CORT release
in both adults and adolescents, significantly sustained levels of CORT were not observed
during withdrawal for either age group. Moreover, it was found that adults experience
a longer-lasting CORT increase during chronic treatment, suggesting a larger and more
robust period of dysfunction in the HPA axis for older consumers of alcohol. These
results highlight CORT and glucocorticoids in general as a potential therapeutic target
for treatment for alcoholism, especially that which has an onset during adolescence.
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
Psychology and NeurosciencePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/12480Citation
Chandra, Upasana (2016). HPA Axis Activation by Ethanol Dependence in Adult and Adolescent Rats. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/12480.Collections
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