Figure 1.

Different timecourse and severity of withdrawal manifestations in alcohol-preferring (P) and Wistar rats. Following 3-5 day gavage of high-dose ethanol (a) stereotypy peaked between 12-15h after the final ethanol dose for Wistar rats, while in P rats, such behavior did not occur until 26-43 h of alcohol deprivation. (b) Similarly, myoclonic body jerks were displayed earlier and to a lesser extent in Wistar rats, resolving after 16 h of withdrawal, while P rats displayed more frequent body jerks over the majority of the second day of withdrawal. (c) Myoclonic head jerks were markedly more frequent in P rats than Wistar rats, peaking during the beginning of day 2 of alcohol deprivation. (d) P rats did not show spontaneous tonic/clonic seizure activity, and Wistars showed it infrequently from 12-21 h after alcohol cessation. (e) Wistar rats showed very infrequent unprovoked startle responses at 12 h, while P rats displayed startle primarily in the middle of day 2 of withdrawal. ^#P<0.05 for main effect of rat type by two-way ANOVA; *P<0.05 by Tukey posthoc test; n=6–10 per rat type. Data is expressed as mean±SEM.