Cocaine Affects Males, Females Differently

Tchort

Tchort

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Mar 25, 2008
Messages
2,390
WTOV 9

10/23/2009

Cocaine affects males and females differently, according to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest University.

The researchers exposed monkeys to cocaine while they were in the womb. As adults, the males had poor impulse control, a problem not seen in the females.

A news release from the school said the finding could lead to a better understanding of how drugs affect people.

"We're looking for ways to predict which individuals are going to take drugs during their lives," said Lindsey Hamilton, a graduate student who led the study. "It was particularly interesting, however, that this effect was only seen in the males. Something is either protecting the females from the effects of the cocaine exposure in the womb or making the males more susceptible to the lasting effects."

To test their impulse control, the monkeys were given a choice between a lever that gave one banana pellet immediately or one that gave several pellets after a few minutes.

She said the male monkeys who were exposed to cocaine before birth had "no patience or impulse control whatsoever," especially compared to monkeys raised in similar conditions who were not exposed to cocaine.

In further testing, Hamilton said, it appears that the male monkeys exposed to cocaine in utero are more likely to self-administer the drug, even in low doses, than controls. Again, the difference was not observed in the female monkeys.

The study was presented at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago.
Click to expand...

http://www.wtov9.com/irresistible/21401438/detail.html
 
Gotta wonder if methylphenidate given to children produces similar effects...
 
also interesting, and somewhat related

Scientists know that addictive drugs can mess with the brain’s circuitry and hijack its reward systems, but a July 31 rat study in the journal Neuron shows that psychological factors may be more instrumental in causing these changes than a drug’s chemical effects are. Cocaine use triggers long-lasting cellular memories in the brain, the study found—but only if the user consumes the drug voluntarily.

A team led by Billy Chen and Antonello Bonci, both at the University of California, San Francisco, trained three groups of rats to press levers that delivered cocaine, food or sugar. The researchers injected cocaine into a fourth group. When they examined the rats’ brain tissue, they found an increase in synaptic strength within the reward center in those rats that had self-administered sugar, food or cocaine. These cellular memories were short-lived in the sugar and food groups, but in rats that had self-administered cocaine they persisted for up to three months after consumption had stopped. Most interestingly, the brains of rats that had consumed cocaine involuntarily did not show such imprints.

The findings illustrate that the pharmacological effects of cocaine alone are not enough to create reward-associated memories, Bonci says. “Instead the motivation for taking the drug seems to be a key component in the process as well.”

The team is working to find ways to remove the long-term cellular memory left by voluntary cocaine use, which eventually could help treat addiction in humans by taking away the desire to actively seek the drug, Chen says.
Click to expand...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cocaine-addiction-stems-from-desire

so cocaine also affects people differently based on whether they use it voluntarily or not. this fact throws into question a lot of previous studies with cocaine, where rats or monkeys or whatnot were injected involuntarily.

the study the OP posted seems to just indicate that cocaine fucks up developing males more than females. injecting monkey fetuses doesnt really say much for how it affects males or females, just that it screws up development in different ways, and its been known forever that taking drugs while pregnant fucks up the fetus... the study doesnt really say anything about how drugs affect people, with the exception of development.

imy first guess is that something for the dopamine system is coded on the X chromosome, which is why it affects males but not females (they've got a backup). anybody know if there's higher instances of Parkinson's among males than females?
 
Last edited:
so cocaine also affects people differently based on whether they use it voluntarily or not. this fact throws into question a lot of previous studies with cocaine, where rats or monkeys or whatnot were injected involuntarily.
Click to expand...
Well, basically speaking, they're saying the motivations for taking the drug matters. And you know what, most of the time the reason you're taking it isn't because "it's an uncontrollable disease."
 
^ that furthers his point. when we involuntarily hook animals to a drug, the results will be different. and when we hook them to the drugs ourselves, well we GIVE them an uncontrollable disease basically

this fact throws into question a lot of previous studies with cocaine
Click to expand...
definitely, probably almost as much as that study where the happier rats with above-par environments got addicted at much lower rates
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top