A diet promoting sugar dependency causes behavioral cross-sensitization to a low dose of amphetamine
Section snippets
Animals and equipment
Sixty female Sprague–Dawley rats weighing 225–250 g were obtained from Taconic Farms (Germantown, NY, USA) and housed individually on a reversed 12-h light/dark cycle. Water was available ad libitum throughout the experiment. Locomotor activity was measured in a computerized 43.2×43.2 cm, open-field activity chamber with 30.5 cm high acrylic sidewalls and 16 infrared photocells on each of the three axes (MED Associates, Georgia, VT, USA). All procedures were carried out in accordance with the
Results
All rats in the experiment tasted the sugar or chow during the period prior to the locomotor activity tests (for the cyclic groups, this was when the sugar and/or chow were first presented that day). There was no difference between groups that would receive amphetamine or saline in the time spent drinking sucrose or eating chow prior to locomotor activity tests on day 1 (F(3,29)=0.24, n.s., F(3,29)=0.54, n.s., respectively) nor on day 21 (F(3,29)=0.16, n.s., F(3,29)=0.28, n.s., respectively).
Discussion
The results of this experiment suggest that sugar and amphetamine may be working via the same neural systems, as evidenced by cross-sensitization. These results are similar to those obtained with drugs of abuse Greenberg and Segal, 1985, Kalivas and Weber, 1988, Schenk et al., 1991, Pierce and Kalivas, 1995, Itzhak and Martin, 1999, Itzhak et al., 1999, Pontieri et al., 2001. This concept has been previously demonstrated in our laboratory with animals first sensitized to amphetamine becoming
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by USPHS grants MH-65024 and DA-10608 and Wyeth Research.
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