Many studies report altered GFAP expression or morphology in rodent brain following ethanol exposure or in postmortem human brain from alcoholics. GFAP expression increases following ethanol drinking procedures ranging in duration from a 4-day binge (Satriotomo et al., 2000) to 5 months of exposure (Alfonso-Loeches et al., 2010). Changes in GFAP depend on several variables, including the ethanol drinking model, sex, brain region, and time point analyzed (Bull et al., 2014; Evrard et al., 2006; Miguel-Hidalgo, 2005; Qin and Crews, 2012b; Wilhelm et al., 2015). For example, rats self-administering ethanol intermittently for 10 weeks show increased GFAP immunoreactivity in the prelimbic cortex 24 h after the last ethanol exposure, but not after 3 weeks of abstinence (Bull et al., 2015). However, rats consuming ethanol on a continuous basis show decreased GFAP staining in prelimbic cortex after 3 weeks of abstinence (Bull et al., 2015). In the NAc, GFAP immunoreactivity increases after 3 weeks of abstinence following chronic intermittent ethanol self-administration and is positively correlated with motivation to resume self-administration following abstinence (Bull et al., 2014). Sex is also a factor
