Anxiogenic responses of rats on withdrawal from chronic ethanol treatment: effects of tianeptine.

Rats were fed a liquid diet with concentrations of ethanol increasing over 2 weeks and then maintained for 4 weeks to give a mean ethanol intake of 11.6 g/kg/day. They were withdrawn from ethanol for 12 hr and tested in two tests of anxiety, the social interaction and elevated plus-maze tests, and in the holeboard, which provides measures of exploration and motor activity. Compared with control animals that had received the liquid diet without ethanol, the rats withdrawn from ethanol showed significant reductions in social interaction, in the percentage of entries onto, and time spent on, the open arms of the plus-maze, and in measures of general activity in all three tests. Tianeptine, a tricyclic antidepressant which increases 5-HT uptake, reversed the anxiogenic responses and the hypoactivity detected in the social interaction test, but was without significant effect in the other tests.