In general, home-cage ethanol drinking studies offer a rapid, high throughput screening tool for evaluating the efficacy of pharmacological treatments targeting alcohol abuse and dependence. Under these conditions, pharmacological manipulations of the rewarding effects of ethanol can be examined. An added benefit is the assessment of a compound’s effects on concurrent food and water intake. However, these latter two measures also introduce a confound such that ethanol absorption is altered (reduced) by gastric contents (i.e., food and water). As noted by Leeman et al. (2010), BAC levels (estimated or actual) are an important parallel measure needed between clinical and animal alcohol research. For instance, the effects of a pharmacological treatment on the latency to drink is an important clinical measure; and, if an animal has food in its stomach, then a BAC reflecting a low pharmacological impact may be present even though the actual amount of ethanol consumed would suggest otherwise. These authors (Leeman et al., 2010) note that the use of a limited access procedure may mitigate some of these effects. In addition, an understanding of a particular rat
