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Volatile solvents as drugs of abuse: focus on the cortico-mesolimbic circuitry.

ABSTRACT: Volatile solvents such as those found in fuels, paints, and thinners are found throughout the world and are used in a variety of industrial applications. However, these compounds are also often intentionally inhaled at high concentrations to produce intoxication. While solvent use has been recognized as a potential drug problem for many years, research on the sites and mechanisms of action of these compounds lags behind that of other drugs of abuse. In this review, we first discuss the epidemiology of voluntary solvent use throughout the world and then consider what is known about their basic pharmacology and how this may explain their use as drugs of abuse. We next present data from preclinical and clinical studies indicating that these substances induce common addiction sequelae such as dependence, withdrawal, and cognitive impairments. We describe how toluene, the most commonly studied psychoactive volatile solvent, alters synaptic transmission in key brain circuits such as the mesolimbic dopamine system and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) that are thought to underlie addiction pathology. Finally, we make the case that activity in mPFC circuits is a critical regulator of the mesolimbic dopamine system's ability to respond to volatile solvents like toluene. Overall, this review provides evidence that volatile solvents have high abuse liability because of their selective effects on critical nodes of the addiction neurocircuitry, and underscores the need for more research into how these compounds induce adaptations in neural circuits that underlie addiction pathology.

SUBMITTER: Beckley JT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3828545 | biostudies-other | 2013 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Project description:In summary, we characterized genomic signatures of response to drugs of abuse and we found positive correlations between the drug-induced expression and various behavioral effects. These signatures are formed by two dynamically inducible transcriptional networks: (1) CREB/SRF-dependent gene pattern that appears to be related to drug-induced neuronal activity, (2) the pattern of genes controlled at least in part via release of glucocorticoids and androgens that are associated with rewarding and harmful drug effects. The discovery of co-expressed networks of genes allowed for the identification of master-switch controlling factors involved in molecular response to the drugs. Finally, using the pharmacological tools we were able to dissect and inhibit particular gene expression patterns from genomic profile. Type: Drug response, Time-course, Gene expression profiling with Illumina Microarrays Keywords: Addiction, Drugs of abuse, Time-course, Immediate Early Genes, Glucocorticoid receptor dependent genes, Cocaine, Heroin, Nicotine, Ethanol, Morphine, Methamphetamine The microarray experiment was performed to analyze time-course of drug-induced transcriptional response in C57BL/6J mouse striatum. Six the most addictive and harming drugs of abuse (morphine 20 mg/kg, heroin 10 mg/kg, ethanol 2 g/kg, nicotine 1 mg/kg, methamphetamine 2 mg/kg or cocaine 25 mg/kg, i.p.) were selected for the comparison. Drug doses were previously reported as rewarding in mice and further tested in our laboratory. To analyze dynamics of early, intermediate and relatively late changes of mRNA abundance the experiment was performed in four time points (1, 2, 4 and 8h after drug administration). To exclude influence of drug injection and circadian rhythm on gene expression profile, control groups of saline treated and naïve animals were prepared for each time point. Design of the experiment assumed pooling of two animals per each array and using of three independent arrays per group. To provide appropriate balance in the whole dataset groups were equally divided between the array hybridization batches. 'Complete' normalized data and non-normalized data (containing control rows not represented in Platform GPL6105) are linked below as supplementary files.

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Volatile solvents as drugs of abuse: focus on the cortico-mesolimbic circuitry.

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