The world's population is continuing to age and older people use healthcare significantly more than younger people. Therefore, understanding behavioral factors that impact health in the older population is a critical public health concern. Older adults continue to consume alcohol, often in a dangerous binge pattern. Due to ethical issues, animal models are often used to investigate the effect of alcohol. Unfortunately alcohol self-administration and acute alcohol withdrawal are yet to be investigated in aged animal models leading to critical caps in our scientific knowledge. The current project investigates alcohol self-administration and acute alcohol withdrawal in female and male adolescent, adult and aged animals. Significant difference in both self-administration and acute withdrawal were found between the three age groups and the differences in self-administration are sex dependent. These data are the first to determine the effect of aging and sex on alcohol self-administration and acute withdrawal and provide further insights into behavioral factors that impact the health of the older population.
