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Cocaine stimulates adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) secretion through a corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF)-mediated
1Clayton Foundation Laboratories for Peptide Biology, Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037.
Brain Research
|October 6, 1987
Abstract:
Cocaine was injected intravenously to non-anesthetized, freely moving adult male rats and caused dose-dependent elevations in plasma adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) levels. The observation that this stimulatory effect was completely abolished by pretreatment with a corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) antiserum, coupled with the lack of effect of cocaine on ACTH secretion by cultured pituitary cells, suggests that cocaine acts within the brain to release endogenous CRF.