Conditioned taste aversion (CTA) is traditionally used to evaluate the aversive properties of ethanol (Liu et al., 2009). There was no difference in consumption of saccharin on trial 0 (before conditioning) between saline- and LPS-pretreated mice (66.2 ± 2.1 g/kg body weight and 61.9 ± 2.7 g/kg body weight, respectively). However, to correct for any initial fluctuations in intake of tastant, intake was calculated as a percentage of the trial 0 consumption for each subject by dividing the amount of saccharin solution consumed on subsequent conditioning trials by the amount of saccharin solution consumed on trial 0 (before conditioning). Ethanol-saccharin pairings produced reduction in saccharin intake across trials compared with saline-saccharin pairings, indicating the development of conditioned taste aversion (CTA) in saline-pre-treated [F(1, 115) = 169; p < .001, effect of treatment; F(4, 115) = 2.6; p < .05, effect of trial; F(4, 115) = 3.9; p < .01, trial × treatment interaction] as well as for LPS-pretreated mice [F(1, 115) = 292; p < .001, effect of treatment; F(4, 115) = 6.5; p < .001, trial × treatment interaction]
