Effect of social housing and oxytocin on the motivation to self-administer methamphetamine in female rats

Abstract

Social housing has been shown to attenuate the motivation for cocaine in female, but not male rats. Here we investigate the potential mechanisms mediating the effect of social housing on the response to methamphetamine (METH). Female rats were individually or socially (pair) housed. The dopamine (DA) response to an acute METH infusion (0.3mg/kg, i.v.) was investigated using in vivo microdialysis in the nucleus accumbens with or without oxytocin (OT; 0.3mg/kg, i.p.) 30min prior to METH. The effects of social housing and OT on self-administered METH (0.06mg/kg/inf) was investigated. The METH-induced DA response was higher in individually housed compared to socially-housed females. On the other hand, individually housed females had a significantly higher breaking point (BP) than socially-housed females. Two weeks of OT treatment reduced BP in both groups. Reinstatement to METH was more pronounced in isolates compared to socially-housed females. More of the socially-housed females had very low BP than did the individually housed females. OT was most effective in reducing BP in females with moderate to high BP, irrespective of housing conditions. These data show that social housing attenuates escalation of METH intake and reinstatement of METH seeking in female rats, and that chronic OT treatment can reduce motivation for METH.

Attenuated cocaine-seeking after oxytocin administration in male and female rats

“…Pretreatment with systemic OXT decreased cocaine seeking on ED1, as well as when administered prior to cued-reinstatement, in female and male rats. Prior reports indicate that administration of OXT decreased cocaine demand in male rats, and demand for methamphetamine in males and females (Bentzley et al, 2014, Cox et al, 2017, Westenbroek et al, 2017), further supporting OXT’s therapeutic potential. However, our results also indicate that an acute administration of OXT on ED1 can delay context extinction, particularly in male rats.…”

Incubation of Oxycodone Craving Following Adult-Onset and Adolescent-Onset Oxycodone Self-Administration in Male Rats

“…Based on substantial evidence demonstrating that environmental enrichment such as social housing attenuates drug seeking across different drug classes ( Thiel et al, 2009 , 2010 ; Hofford et al, 2014 ; Imperio et al, 2018 ; Frankowska et al, 2019 ; Westenbroek et al, 2019 ; Cho et al, 2020 ; Grimm and Sauter, 2020 ; Mastrogiovanni et al, 2021 ), we were interested in examining whether this is also the case in our study. Note that different from most studies in which housing condition is manipulated only during abstinence periods, here the manipulation of housing condition started after intravenous surgeries.…”

Sex-dependent regulation of social reward by oxytocin: an inverted U hypothesis

“…Furthermore, in female rats, DOPAC (DA metabolite) levels in the striatum were elevated during same-sex social interactions, while in males no difference in DOPAC levels were observed [123]. In addition, social housing can reduce drug intake in operant conditioning models, compared to social isolation housing [124][125][126][127], an effect that is more consistent in females than in males and may be mediated by OT in mesolimbic regions [128,129]. OT itself also decreases drug-related reward and reinforcement [130], with greater effects in females than males [131,132].…”