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Opioid dependence found to permanently change brains of rats:
Approximately one-quarter of patients who are prescribed opioids for chronic pain misuse them, with five to 10 percent developing an opioid use disorder or addiction. In a new study, published Jan. 14, 2020 in PNAS, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that opioid dependence produced permanent changes in the brains of rats.
More specifically, researchers reported that dependence on oxycodone, a potent opioid painkiller, led to permanent neuro-adaptations of the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) at the level of the nociceptin system, a brainwide network that modulates transmission of pain. Downregulation or suppression of the nociceptin system in the CeA led to an increase in activation of GABA receptors in rats highly addicted to opioids. The discovery is consistent with previous findings reporting CeA neuroa-daptations after cocaine and alcohol dependence.
When researchers restored nociceptin levels in the CeA, it resulted in normalization of GABAergic transmission and a reduction of the rats' opioid consumption.
"This suggests the nociceptin system may be a promising target for the treatment of opioid use disorder," said senior author Giordano de Guglielmo, PharmD, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine.
"To reveal the role of nociceptin in the central nucleus of the amygdala, we used a multidisciplinary approach with behavioral models, molecular biology and electrophysiology," said first author Marsida Kallupi, PharmD, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry. "That allowed us to conclude that downregulation of this peptide may be partially responsible for excessive opioid addiction-like behaviors."
Marsida Kallupi, Lieselot L. G. Carrette, Jenni Kononoff, Leah C. Solberg Woods, Abraham A. Palmer, Paul Schweitzer, Olivier George, Giordano de Guglielmo. Nociceptin attenuates the escalation of oxycodone self-administration by normalizing CeA–GABA transmission in highly addicted rats. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020; 201915143 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1915143117
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @05:51PM
In general I do not disagree. You don't learn aerodynamics from zero without trying to mimic a bird, and probably catastrophically failing. The one major point I would emphasize is that it's not the negative results that concern me, it's the positive ones. When trying to fly, there's no real risk of side affects. If you can get enough lift to get off the ground, and you can safely land it - then you now have a workable flying device. When you're talking about the brain things are much more difficult because a failure can look like a success - a repeatable 'success', no less.
As of 2013 [cbsnews.com] about 1 in 6 Americans takes at least one psychiatric drug over the course of a year - 80% of them report longterm usage. That number is up from very near 0 not that long ago. If these drugs have even the slightest of positive effects, we should be seeing an ultra-positive overall effect on the nation in terms of mental health. Yet we seem to be seeing the exact opposite. When you look at things racially the numbers are even more insane. For instance more than 1 in 5 whites in America is on psychiatric drugs. And those numbers have been increasing extremely rapidly.
If it turns out our positive results are myopic, as history shows time and again that they tend to be, then we're metaphorically drilling a hole into the heads of a huge chunk of the entire nation's population.