Effect of neonatal clomipramine treatment on adult alcohol drinking in the AA and ANA rat lines.

In order to test further the hypothesis that neonatal active (REM) sleep suppression by means of clomipramine, an inhibitor of monoamine reuptake, is involved in the subsequent increase of voluntary alcohol consumption in rats, the AA (alcohol preferring) and ANA (alcohol avoiding) rat lines were injected daily with 25 mg/kg clomipramine IP from the 7th to the 20th postnatal days. At the age of 3 months the clomipramine AA rats consumed significantly more 10% (v/v) alcohol solution than the control AA rats. Neonatal clomipramine treatment did not, however, affect the drinking patterns of the ANA rats. Secondly, in order to test the alcohol-deprivation effect; i.e., the increase in alcohol consumption after its deprivation, the AA and ANA rats were deprived of alcohol for 17 days. There was a significant difference between the temporal pattern of changes in alcohol drinking produced by alcohol deprivation in the AA rats and the pattern in the ANA rats. Furthermore, the clomipramine treated AA rats tended to show a decrease and the clomipramine ANA rats an increase in their post-deprivation alcohol intake compared to the control AA and ANA rats. The results are interpreted in terms of active sleep being important for later alcohol drinking and other genetically determined differences in behavior.