Nasim Vousooghi
Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran
Title: Adulthood paternal and/or maternal exposure to morphine affects memory and drug reinforcing effects in male rat offspring
Biography
Biography: Nasim Vousooghi
Abstract
Drug addiction is a multifactorial disorder and is aff ected by genetics, environment, and developmental issues. It has
been shown that epigenetics is critically involved in the addiction process and memory formation in the brain. We have
evaluated passive avoidance memory and morphine conditioned place preference (CPP) in the male off spring of male and/or
female rats with a history of morphine exposure in the adulthood. Adult male and female animals consumed oral morphine
for 3 weeks and then were kept drug free for 10 days. Aft er that, animals were let to mate with either a control or an abstinent
rat. Memory of male off spring was assessed by step through test, and morphine reinforcement was tested with CCP method.
Off spring of morphine exposed parents showed considerable memory defi cit in comparison to the control group which was
more noticeable in the progeny of abstinent mothers. Data of CPP indicated that injection of 7.5 mg/kg morphine that could
meaningfully induce CPP in control rats was not effi cient to cause CPP in the off spring of abstinent rats. While these animals
were conditioned with a greater dose of morphine (10 mg/kg), but, tolerance to the reinforcing eff ects of morphine was more
in the progeny of abstinent mothers compared to the off spring of abstinent fathers. It is concluded that parental morphine
exposure in adulthood even before mating has damaging eff ects on memory of the male progeny and may result in tolerance
to the morphine reinforcing eff ects. Th ese eff ects are more prominent when the morphine exposed parent is the female animal.