ArticlePsychopharmacology2015
Ethanol and nicotine interaction within the posterior ventral tegmental area in male and female alcohol-preferring rats: evidence of synergy and differential gene activation in the nucleus accumbens shell.
Article in Psychopharmacology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 44 citations in OpenAlex.
- Chronic nicotine vapor-induced enhancement of ethanol drinking-in-the-dark is associated with reduced medial prefrontal cortical activity.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Restoration of MPTP-induced Dopamine and Tyrosine Hydroxylase Depletion in the Mouse Brain Through Ethanol and Nicotine.Neurotoxicity research · 2025Article
- Vesicular glutamate transporter 2 expression in the ventral tegmental area of outbred male rats following exposure to nicotine and alcohol.Drug and alcohol dependence reports · 2023Article
- Adolescent alcohol and nicotine exposure alters the adult response to alcohol use.Advances in drug and alcohol research · 2023Review
- The incentive amplifying effects of nicotine: Roles in alcohol seeking and consumption.Advances in pharmacology (San Diego, Calif.) · 2022Review
- Adolescent Intermittent Ethanol (AIE) Enhances the Dopaminergic Response to Ethanol within the Mesolimbic Pathway during Adulthood: Alterations in Cholinergic/Dopaminergic Genes Expression in the Nucleus Accumbens Shell.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Article
- Psychosocial impairment following mild blast-induced traumatic brain injury in rats.Behavioural brain research · 2021Article
- DNA methylation of Vesicular Glutamate Transporters in the mesocorticolimbic brain following early-life stress and adult ethanol exposure-an explorative study.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Genome-to-phenome research in rats: progress and perspectives.International journal of biological sciences · 2021Review
- The Rewarding and Anxiolytic Properties of Ethanol within the Central Nucleus of the Amygdala: Mediated by Genetic Background and Nociceptin.The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics · 2020Article
- Unequal interactions between alcohol and nicotine co-consumption: suppression and enhancement of concurrent drug intake.Psychopharmacology · 2020Article
- Co-administration of ethanol and nicotine heightens sensitivity to ethanol reward within the nucleus accumbens (NAc) shell and increasing NAc shell BDNF is sufficient to enhance ethanol reward in naïve Wistar rats.Journal of neurochemistry · 2020Article
- One Is Not Enough: Understanding and Modeling Polysubstance Use.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2020Review
- Peri-adolescent alcohol consumption increases sensitivity and dopaminergic response to nicotine during adulthood in female alcohol-preferring (P) rats: Alterations to α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor expression.Behavioural brain research · 2019Article
- Adolescent Intermittent Ethanol Increases the Sensitivity to the Reinforcing Properties of Ethanol and the Expression of Select Cholinergic and Dopaminergic Genes within the Posterior Ventral Tegmental Area.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2019Article
- Therapeutic challenges for concurrent ethanol and nicotine consumption: naltrexone and varenicline fail to alter simultaneous ethanol and nicotine intake by female alcohol-preferring (P) rats.Psychopharmacology · 2019Article
- Alcohol Interaction with Cocaine, Methamphetamine, Opioids, Nicotine, Cannabis, and γ-Hydroxybutyric Acid.Biomedicines · 2019Review
- Assessment of fear and anxiety associated behaviors, physiology and neural circuits in rats with reduced serotonin transporter (SERT) levels.Translational psychiatry · 2019Article
- Article
- The influence of adolescent nicotine exposure on ethanol intake and brain gene expression.PloS one · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
rationaleEthanol and nicotine are frequently co-abused. The biological basis for the high co-morbidity rate is not known. Alcohol-preferring (P) rats will self-administer EtOH or nicotine directly into the posterior ventral tegmental area (pVTA).
objectiveThe current experiments examined whether sub-threshold concentrations of EtOH and nicotine would support the development of self-administration behaviors if the drugs were combined.
methodsRats were implanted with a guide cannula aimed at the pVTA. Rats were randomly assigned to groups that self-administered sub-threshold concentrations of EtOH (50 mg%) or nicotine (1 μM) or combinations of ethanol (25 or 50 mg%) and nicotine (0.5 or 1.0 μM). Alterations in gene expression downstream projections areas (nucleus accumbens shell, AcbSh) were assessed following a single, acute exposure to EtOH (50 mg%), nicotine (1 μM), or ethanol and nicotine (50 mg% + 1 μM) directly into the pVTA.
resultsThe results indicated that P rats would co-administer EtOH and nicotine directly into the pVTA at concentrations that did not support individual self-administration. EtOH and nicotine directly administered into the pVTA resulted in alterations in gene expression in the AcbSh (50.8-fold increase in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), 2.4-fold decrease in glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), 10.3-fold increase in vesicular glutamate transporter 1 (Vglut1)) that were not observed following microinjections of equivalent concentrations/doses of ethanol or nicotine.
conclusionThe data indicate that ethanol and nicotine act synergistically to produce reinforcement and alter gene expression within the mesolimbic dopamine system. The high rate of co-morbidity of alcoholism and nicotine dependence could be the result of the interactions of EtOH and nicotine within the mesolimbic dopamine system.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.