Gender differences in drug abuse

女性开始使用可卡因，接受治疗的年龄比男性更早，使用可卡因的情况也更严重 在吸食量上比男性更多。因此，女性从最初的使用到依赖的过程比男性更快。这 “伸缩”效应反映了医学后果发展的更短的时间进程和 具有依赖障碍特征的行为/心理因素。建议进行的研究是 从根本上重要的第一步，在归纳和理解结构-功能关系 吸毒行为的表现及其对男性和女性的长期影响 女性。在这项建议中，我们试图确定产生性行为的荷尔蒙和发育事件 二态递增多巴胺系统导致性别差异的药物滥用责任，并识别 一些调节这些性别差异的相关神经过程。 在大脑发育过程中，荷尔蒙有两次会影响大脑的组织。在 大鼠在围产期和青春期再次出现这种情况。实验是 提出用来检验以下假设：女性对可卡因滥用的易感性增加取决于 在关键的围产期期间没有接触性腺激素，以及随后的接触 在青春期周围对卵巢激素的影响。可卡因的自我给药将作为主要的 结果衡量标准。 人类在青春期获得的吸毒行为是药物滥用的有力预测因素 成年后会有问题。我们假设荷尔蒙在青春期前后开始暴露 增加可卡因治疗在#年强化和/或长期后果的脆弱性 无论是雄性还是雌性。我们将确定青春期是否是一个脆弱程度更高的时期 雌性大鼠与雄性大鼠之间自我注射可卡因。另一种情况是，青少年可能并不比 容易受到精神运动兴奋剂的成瘾特性的影响，但长期的后果是 在青春期接触这些药物会导致成年后易感性增加，这种可能性将是 也进行了检查。 最后，组织和发展对性别差异影响的神经基础 对可卡因的反应将通过观察纹状体和核的透析液中的多巴胺来检验。 伏伏草。这些实验是探索性别差异在多大程度上 可卡因滥用的脆弱性影响纹状体和伏隔核。

Women begin using cocaine, enter treatment at earlier ages than men, and have more severe cocaine use at intake than men. Thus, women progress from initial use to dependence faster than men do. This "telescoping" effect reflects a briefer time course for the development of medical consequences and behavioral/psychological factors characteristic of a dependence disorder. The studies proposed are a fundamentally important first step towards understanding structure-function relations in the induction and expression of drug-taking behavior and the long-term consequences of this behavior in both males and females. In this proposal we seek to identify the hormonal and developmental events that produce a sexually dimorphic ascending dopamine system that results in sex differences in drug abuse liability, and to identify some of the associated neural processes that mediate these sex differences. There are two times during development of the brain when hormones can influence its organization. In the rat these occur during the peri-natal period and again during the peri-pubertal period. Experiments are proposed to test the hypothesis that the enhanced vulnerability of females for cocaine abuse is dependent on the lack of exposure to gonadal hormones during the critical perinatal period, as well as subsequent exposure to ovarian hormones during the peripubertal period. Self-administration of cocaine will be used as the primary outcome measure. Acquisition of drug taking behavior during adolescence in humans is a strong predictor of drug abuse problems as an adult. We hypothesize that onset of hormone exposure during the peri-pubertal period contributes to increased vulnerability for the reinforcing and/or long-term consequences of cocaine treatment in both males and females. We will determine whether adolescence is a period of enhanced vulnerability for female vs. male rats to self-administer cocaine. Alternatively, it is possible that adolescents aren't more vulnerable to the addictive properties of the psychomotor stimulants, but that the long-term consequences of exposure to these drugs during adolescence result in increased susceptibility as an adult, this possibility will be examined as well. Finally, the neural basis of the organizational and developmental influences on sex differences in the response to cocaine will be examined by looking at dopamine in dialysate from striatum and nucleus accumbens. These experiments are a first step towards exploring the extent that sex differences in vulnerability for cocaine abuse impacts the striatum and nucleus accumbens.