Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Galvez, Jonathan

Titel

Effects of Antioxidants on Nicotine Recognition in Rats

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations Publishing

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

• ProQuest

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Smoking of tobacco products is a major health concern and cause of death all over the world, with increasing numbers of deaths every year. The Forster lab is attempting to find new ways of counteracting the effects of nicotine, the addicting chemical in tobacco, to lead to new drug treatments for tobacco use disorder. We evaluated the hypothesis that redox signaling-related effects on brain dopamine neurotransmission participate in the subjective effects of nicotine using a drug discrimination paradigm. In this paradigm, rat subjects learn to recognize the effects of a drug and report its presence or absence using behavioral responses emitted to obtain food reward. Various antioxidants including vitamin C, vitamin E, apocynin, and FSNY-1 were chosen as potential antagonists for this study to evaluate multiple sources and targets of reactive oxygen species and their participation in the addiction pathway. The nicotinic cholinergic receptor antagonists mecamylamine and hexamethonium were used as controls for the study due to their ability to block cholinergic neurotransmission. Mecamylamine antagonized the discrimination of nicotine, but none of the tested drugs were able to show similar activity. It does not appear, from our gathered data, that any of the antioxidants or hexamethonium were able to mimic the effects of mecamylamine and antagonize the effects of nicotine discrimination in our rat subjects. This study shows that given a short time frame, the tested antioxidants were unable to quickly block the effects of nicotine along the addiction pathway or do so at an observable rate.