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Environmental Enrichment does not Reduce the Rewarding and Neurotoxic Effects of Methamphetamine

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Abstract

Abuse of amphetamine analogues, such as methamphetamine (METH), represents an important health problem because of their powerful addictive and neurotoxic effects. Abuse of METH induces dopamine neuron terminals loss and cell death in the striatum similar to what is found in other neurodegenerative processes. Exposing mice and rats to enriched environments (EE) has been shown to produce significant protective effects against drug-induced reward as well as against neurodegenerative processes. Here, we investigated whether exposure to EE could reduce the METH-induced reward and neurotoxicity. For this, we reared mice for 2 months during early stages of life in standard environments or EE and then, at adulthood, we tested the ability of METH to induce conditioned place preference and neurotoxicity. We found that, contrary to what we found with other drugs such as cocaine and heroin, EE was unable to reduce the rewarding effects of METH. In addition, contrary to what we found with other toxins such as MPTP, EE did not diminish the striatal neurotoxicity induced by METH (4 × 10 mg/kg) as measured by dopamine content, tyrosine hydroxylase protein levels and apoptosis. Our results demonstrate that the rewarding and neurotoxic effects of METH are not reduced by EE and highlight the great risks associated with the increased popularity of this drug amongst the young population.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Anne Cantereau for technical assistance with confocal images. We acknowledge the National Institute on Drug Abuse for generous gift of METH. This study was funded by the CNRS, University of Poitiers and the Contrat de Projet Etat Region (CPER) #5.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Biologie et Physiologie Cellulaires, CNRS-6187, Université de Poitiers, 40 Avenue du Recteur Pineau, 86022, Poitiers, France

    Nathalie Thiriet, Benjamin Gennequin, Virginie Lardeux, Claudia Chauvet, Mickael Decressac, Thierry Janet, Mohamed Jaber & Marcello Solinas

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  1. Nathalie Thiriet
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  2. Benjamin Gennequin
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  3. Virginie Lardeux
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  7. Mohamed Jaber
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  8. Marcello Solinas
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Correspondence to Nathalie Thiriet.

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Thiriet, N., Gennequin, B., Lardeux, V. et al. Environmental Enrichment does not Reduce the Rewarding and Neurotoxic Effects of Methamphetamine. Neurotox Res 19, 172–182 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12640-010-9158-2

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