Adolescent nicotine or cigarette smoke exposure changes subsequent Response to nicotine conditioned place preference and self-administration

摘要

Nicotine/cigarette addiction starts young. Indeed, most smokers started when they were adolescents. Adolescence has been implicated to be a critical period for nicotine/cigarette addiction, thus it is important to understand the consequences of such early exposure. In the present study, we sought to characterize the effects of adolescent nicotine or cigarette smoke pre-exposure on the subsequent addictive effects of nicotine. The rewarding and reinforcing effects of nicotine were evaluated in drug-naive, nicotine pre-exposed, or cigarette smoke pre-exposed adolescent and adult rats, through the conditioned place preference (CPP) and the self-administration (SA) tests. In the CPP test, drug-naive adolescent rats demonstrated CPP for the 0.2 mg/kg dose of nicotine, while drug-naive adult rats showed CPP for the relatively higher dose of 0.6 mg/kg.