VAR was used in doses of 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 mg/kg BW. Low doses of VAR are preferable to high doses because low doses are receptor specific and do not alter food consumption in rats. VAR, like many other ligands, interacts with different receptor classes as a depending on the dose administered. The higher the dose, the less selective VAR becomes. In doses above 3.0 mg/kg, VAR may lose specificity for the α4β2 and/or the α7 nicotine acetylcholine receptors (Rollema et al., 2007) and a dose of 3.0 mg/kg VAR has been reported to decrease food intake in rats (O’Connor et al., 2010).
