ArticleNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology2017
Prior Exposure to Alcohol Has No Effect on Cocaine Self-Administration and Relapse in Rats: Evidence from a Rat Model that Does Not Support the Gateway Hypothesis.
Article in Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
What it found
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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
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 27 citations in OpenAlex.
- The role of polysubstance use in the development, maintenance, and treatment of stimulant use disorders.Pharmacological reviews · 2026Review
- Ethanol self-administration reduced the efficacy of a behavioral intervention to decrease cocaine choice in socially housed male and female monkeys.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2025Article
- Ethanol consumption prior to cocaine self-administration reduced vulnerability to cocaine reinforcement in socially subordinate female and male monkeys.Psychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Animal models of cocaine use: importance of social context and co-use.Trends in pharmacological sciences · 2025Review
- Effect of Selective Lesions of Nucleus Accumbens µ-Opioid Receptor-Expressing Cells on Heroin Self-Administration in Male and Female Rats: A Study with NovelThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Effects of chronic cocaine and ethanol self-administration on brain dopamine receptors in a rhesus monkey model of polysubstance abuse.Addiction biology · 2022Article
- Anabolic androgenic steroids used as performance and image enhancing drugs in professional and amateur athletes: Toxicological and psychopathological findings.Human psychopharmacology · 2022Article
- Adolescent nicotine administration increases nicotinic acetylcholine receptor binding and functional connectivity in specific cortico-striatal-thalamic circuits.Brain communications · 2022Article
- Ethanol pre-exposure differentially impacts the rewarding and aversive effects of α-pyrrolidinopentiophenone (α-PVP): Implications for drug use and abuse.Pharmacology, biochemistry, and behavior · 2021Article
- Effect of chronic binge-like ethanol consumption on subsequent cocaine reinforcement in rhesus monkeys.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2021Article
- Drug addiction co-morbidity with alcohol: Neurobiological insights.International review of neurobiology · 2021Review
- Alcohol and Pain: A Translational Review of Preclinical and Clinical Findings to Inform Future Treatment Strategies.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2020Review
- One Is Not Enough: Understanding and Modeling Polysubstance Use.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2020Review
- Nicotine Gateway Effects on Adolescent Substance Use.The western journal of emergency medicine · 2019Review
- Prior alcohol use enhances vulnerability to compulsive cocaine self-administration by promoting degradation of HDAC4 and HDAC5.Science advances · 2017Article
- Testing the Gateway Hypothesis.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2017Article
- Junk food diet-induced obesity increases D2 receptor autoinhibition in the ventral tegmental area and reduces ethanol drinking.PloS one · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The gateway hypothesis posits that initial exposure to legal drugs promotes subsequent addiction to illicit drugs. However, epidemiological studies are correlational and cannot rule out the alternative hypothesis of shared addiction vulnerability to legal and illegal drugs. We tested the gateway hypothesis using established rat alcohol exposure procedures and cocaine self-administration and reinstatement (relapse) procedures. We gave Wistar or alcohol-preferring (P) rats intermittent access to water or 20% alcohol in their homecage for 7 weeks (three 24-h sessions/week). We also exposed Wistar rats to air or intoxicating alcohol levels in vapor chambers for 14-h/day for 7 weeks. We then tested the groups of rats for acquisition of cocaine self-administration using ascending cocaine doses (0.125, 0.25, 0.5, 1.0 mg/kg/infusion) followed by a dose-response curve after acquisition of cocaine self-administration. We then extinguished lever pressing and tested the rats for reinstatement of drug seeking induced by cocaine-paired cues and cocaine priming (0, 2.5, 5, 10 mg/kg, i.p.). Wistar rats consumed moderate amounts of alcohol (4.6 g/kg/24 h), P rats consumed higher amounts of alcohol (7.6 g/kg/24 h), and Wistar rats exposed to alcohol vapor had a mean blood alcohol concentration of 176.2 mg/dl during the last week of alcohol exposure. Alcohol pre-exposure had no effect on cocaine self-administration, extinction responding, and reinstatement of drug seeking. Pre-exposure to moderate, high, or intoxicating levels of alcohol had no effect on cocaine self-administration and relapse to cocaine seeking. Our data do not support the notion that alcohol is a gateway drug to cocaine.
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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.