Neurosteroid Binding Sites on the GABAA Receptor Complex as Novel Targets for Therapeutics to Reduce Alcohol Abuse and Dependence
Figure 2
Mean number of GABAA alpha-4 subunit transcript copies per cell in the hypothalamus (top panel) and frontal cortex (bottom panel) of rats administered 56 mg/kg of DHEA or vehicle. Drug-naïve male rats received either DHEA () or an equal volume of cyclodextrin vehicle () for ten consecutive days; on the tenth day, subjects were sacrificed and their brains were collected. Brains were dissected using the Glowinski technique [75], and each brain region was pooled and homogenized. Due to the high lipid content of the samples, a spin column technique was utilized for the RNA extraction. RNA analysis was performed using TaqMan assay kits (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, Calif, USA). Approximately 1 to 2 μL of each sample were used to determine the RNA concentration in each sample using Nanodrop. Values are expressed as a fraction of a normalizing gene, ribosomal 18S RNA.
