Effects of dopamine antagonists on methamphetamine-induced dopamine release in high and low alcohol preference rats.

The authors have previously shown that high alcohol preference rats (HAP) have a significantly higher sensitivity than low alcohol preference rats (LAP) for methamphetamine (MAP). In this study, changes in dopamine and serotonin release induced by MAP (1 mg/kg, intraperitoneally) after pre-treatment with D1 and D2 receptor antagonists were examined in the striatum of rats with different alcohol preferences to elucidate differences in receptor levels between the two rat strains. D1 receptor antagonist SCH23390 or D2 receptor antagonist haloperidol were administrated intracerebroventricularly 10 min before MAP stimulation. This study investigated the effect of methamphetamine-induced dopamine and serotonin release in striatum using microdialysis of freely moving rats coupled to ECD-HPLC. With haloperidol treatment both strains of rats showed a significantly greater maximum increase on MAP-induced dopamine release compared with respective control rats. However, after SCH23390 treatment only HAP rats showed a significantly greater increase in dopamine release compared with controls. SCH23390 blocks mainly D1 receptors only in the post-synaptic membrane, whereas haloperidol blocks D2 receptors in both the pre-synaptic and post-synaptic membranes. The MAP-induced increase in dopamine release following haloperidol pre-treatment was greater than SCH23390 pre-treatment in both strains. This result indicates that D2 receptors (autoreceptors) in the pre-synaptic membrane were blocked, leading to the elimination of the feedback function that regulates dopamine release. These data suggested that alcohol preference is associated with the action of MAP, and the dopaminergic mechanism, specifically the D1 system in the striatum, might have a different pathway dependent on alcohol preference.