Prenatal and postnatal cocaine exposure enhances the anxiety‐ and depression‐like behaviors in rats during cocaine withdrawal

Abstract

Prenatal drug exposure is a public health problem, which results in profound behavioral problems during childhood and adolescence, mainly represented by an increase in the risk of cocaine abuse at an early age. In rodents, prenatal and postnatal cocaine exposure enhanced locomotor activity and cocaine‐ or nicotine‐induced locomotor sensitization. Various authors consider that the adverse emotional states (anxiety and depression) that occur during cocaine withdrawal are the main factors that precipitate, relapse, and increase chronic cocaine abuse, which could increase the risk of relapse of cocaine abuse. Therefore, the objective of this study was to characterize anxiety‐ and depression‐like behaviors at different times (30, 60, 90, and 120 days) of cocaine withdrawal in rats born to females exposed prenatally and postnatally to cocaine. A group of pregnant female Wistar rats were administered daily from day GD0 to GD21 with cocaine (cocaine preexposure group), and another group of pregnant female rats was administered daily with saline (saline preexposure group). Of the litters resulting from the cocaine‐pre‐exposed and saline‐pre‐exposed pregnant female groups, only the male rats were used for the recording of the anxiety‐ and depression‐like behaviors at different times (30, 60, 90, and 120 days) of cocaine withdrawal The study found that prenatal and postnatal cocaine exposure dose‐dependent enhanced anxiety‐ and depression‐like behaviors. This suggests that prenatal and postnatal cocaine exposure can result in enhanced vulnerability to cocaine abuse in young and adult humans.