Fig. 8.

Effects of (±)-MDMA pretreatment on secretion of corticosterone (top panel) and prolactin (bottom panel) evoked by acute (±)-MDMA challenge. Male rats received three i.p. injections of 1.5 or 7.5 mg/kg MDMA, one dose every 2 h. Saline was administered on the same schedule. Two weeks later, each rat received a single i.v. injection of 1 mg/kg MDMA at time zero, followed by a single injection of 3 mg/kg MDMA 60 min later. Blood samples were drawn via indwelling catheters immediately before injections and 30 min after each injection; plasma corticosterone and prolactin were measured by RIA (Baumann et al. 1998). Data are mean±SEM expressed as the percentage of baseline hormone levels for N=8 rats/group. Baseline corticosterone and prolactin levels were 73±18 and 2.4±0.6 ng/ml of plasma, respectively. Asterisk denotes significance compared to saline-pretreated control group (P<0.05 Duncan’s)