{"doi":"10.1037/bne0000643","title":"A rat model of oral hormonal contraception: Effects on drug preference and gonadal function.","abstract":"Gonadal hormones (e.g., estradiol and progesterone) influence response to, and preference for, drugs in females; however, how hormonal contraceptives, synthetic hormones that decrease gonadal hormone levels, affect drug preference is not known. The current experiment investigated whether oral administration of levonorgestrel (LNG), a synthetic progestin used in hormonal contraceptives, would lead to a reduction in amphetamine (AMPH) preference. Female rats were tested for their AMPH preference over 3 days (which also served as extinction sessions) after receiving oral administration of LNG (250 μg, 500 μg, or 2 mg) or during an estrous cycle stage associated with higher levels of gonadal hormones (i.e., proestrus/estrus). Our results show that AMPH preference was reduced for females on 500 μg and 2 mg of LNG across extinction sessions. Interestingly, only the 2 mg LNG dose led to a disruption in the naturally occurring estrous cycle. Uterine horn width, an index of estrogen exposure, was decreased in all LNG groups, but only the 500 μg and 2 mg LNG groups showed suppression of gonadal hormones, suggesting that both doses are sufficient for contraceptive use in rats. Our study demonstrates an effective and noninvasive oral LNG administration method in a rat model and further shows reduced AMPH preference by LNG. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).","journal":"Behavioral Neuroscience","year":2025,"id":585253,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9565,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1499063,"name":"Payton E. Antonacci","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1499064,"name":"Gahyun Kim","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1321384,"name":"Heba Ajmal","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1390954,"name":"Rashi Agarwal","orcid":"0000-0002-0504-899X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1499065,"name":"Aihan Nguyen","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":498991,"name":"Juan M. Dominguez","orcid":"0000-0002-3664-6036","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":410160,"name":"Marie‐H. Monfils","orcid":"0000-0001-8971-6651","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1309541,"name":"Hongjoo J. Lee","orcid":"0000-0002-0110-5432","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":965273,"name":"Adriana Vasquez","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:59:20.067334Z","pmid":"41396528","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}