The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics
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J. Pharmacol. Exp. Ther. · Apr 1992
Effects of buprenorphine and other opioid agonists and antagonists on alfentanil- and cocaine-reinforced responding in rhesus monkeys.
Rhesus monkeys self-administered a range of doses of either cocaine or alfentanil under a fixed-ratio 30, time out 45 sec schedule of i.v. drug delivery. Buprenorphine suppressed responding maintained by both cocaine and alfentanil; however, much larger doses of buprenorphine were required to suppress cocaine-reinforced as opposed to alfentanil-reinforced responding. ⋯ Increasing doses of the pure opioid antagonist quadazocine produced shifts to the right in the alfentanil rate-maintaining dose-effect curves but had no dose-related effect on behavior maintained by cocaine. The data suggest that buprenorphine suppresses drug-maintained responding through an agonist action but that alfentanil-maintained responding is uniquely sensitive to buprenorphine's effects.