Sex Differences In The Ability To Predict And Treat Opiate Abuse
Abstract
Due to improved battlefield medicine, the majority of Soldiers who are wounded survive and are treated with prescription opioid painkillers. This award had two goals: to test a novel means (Distress Intolerance, DI) of predicting risk for prescription opioid abuse, and to test a pharmacological compound (CRF receptor antagonist) for prevention of prescription opioid abuse and addiction. We used male and female rats that were exposed to an experimenter-administered regimen of escalating-dose morphine (or saline) injections. This design allowed us to be sensitive to sex differences, which exist in human drug abusers, and it allowed us to determine if a model of physician prescribed opioids alters vulnerability to subsequent abuse. Over the 3-year grant period we completed analysis of pre- and post-morphine DI measures and their correlation with subsequent vulnerability to oxycodone self-administration, and we completed analysis of the impact of prior experimenter-administered morphine on subsequent vulnerability to oxycodone self-administration in male and female rats. We made preliminary progress on the effects of antalarmin on oxycodone self-administration but were hampered by delays in ACURO animal protocol approval and changes in staff that required additional time for training. Regardless, we can use our antalarmin data as pilot data for additional funding opportunities. Our final results therefore include: 1. Multiple linear regression with DI measures and oxycodone self-administration demonstrated that, in males, there is a significant correlation between baseline Tail Flick withdrawal latency and amount of self-administered oxycodone. The data show that the lower the latency to tail withdrawal at baseline (pre-morphine), the more oxycodone is take, and they support our hypothesis that pre-opioid exposure baseline DI measures can predict vulnerability to subsequent opioid misuse.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2020
- Accession Number
- AD1103056
Entities
People
- Elena Chartoff