Rationale: It has been suggested that withdrawal from sugar produces a set of symptoms that resemble those observed following withdrawal from opiate drugs.
Objectives: This study explored naltrexone-induced withdrawal in animals pre-exposed to acute, chronic, and intermittent high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or acute and chronic heroin administration.
Methods: Experiment 1 examined conditioned place avoidance (CPA) induced by different doses of naltrexone (0.01-1 mg/kg) in naïve male Sprague-Dawley rats. In experiment 2, rats received continuous or intermittent home cage HFCS access (0 or 50 %) prior to conditioning with 1 mg/kg naltrexone. In experiment 3, HFCS ingestion was increased by food restriction and rats were conditioned with 3 mg/kg naltrexone. In experiment 4, the timing and quantity of HFCS ingestion (0, 0.5, 1, 2 g/kg) was controlled by intragastric administration, and rats were conditioned with 1 mg/kg naltrexone. In experiment 5, rats received acute (2 mg/kg) or chronic heroin (3.5 mg/kg/day) prior to conditioning with 1 mg/kg naltrexone.
Results: Administration of naltrexone produced moderate conditioned place avoidance in naïve rats. Importantly, acute, continuous, and intermittent HFCS pre-exposure did not significantly amplify this effect, but acute and chronic heroin pre-exposure did.
Conclusions: As assessed by CPA, these results in rats fail to support the hypothesis that an opioid antagonist can precipitate similar affective withdrawal states following pre-exposure to sugars and opiates.
Keywords: Conditioned place avoidance; Heroin; High fructose corn syrup; Naltrexone.