Potentiation of cathinone by caffeine and nikethamide.

The drug discrimination paradigm was employed to evaluate the effect of coadministration of both caffeine and nikethamide upon the discrimination of a low dose of cathinone. In rats trained to discriminate between 0.8 mg/kg l-cathinone and its vehicle in a two-lever food-motivated operant task, 0.2 mg/kg cathinone produced 29.2% of responses on the cathinone-appropriate lever. This lever was chosen in 0 and 50% of trials with 25 mg/kg nikethamide and 20 mg/kg caffeine, respectively. Coadministration of caffeine, nikethamide, or caffeine plus nikethamide with low-dose cathinone produced strong cathinone-like discriminative performance. This potentiattion of cathinone by caffeine and nikethamide is reflective of noncontrolled drugs of abuse containing similar combinations especially for that of antiadipositum X-112, a drug containing all three agents and widely abused in Europe.