Investigating the actions of bupropion on dependence-related effects of nicotine in rats.

Rationale: The clinical success of the antidepressant bupropion, marketed as Zyban in smoking cessation, presents an ideal opportunity to unravel its mechanism of action utilising animal models of nicotine dependence.

Objective: The present experiments utilise bupropion as a reference compound to examine putative interactions with stimulus properties of nicotine in rats.

Methods And Results: In male hooded Lister rats, bupropion (10 and 30 mg/kg IP) administered 30 min prior to each intravenous nicotine (0.