Drug addiction is a psychiatric disorder for which no pharmacological treatment with long-term efficacy currently exists: all addictive substances have in common the fact that they raise concentrations of the neurotransmitter dopamine within brain regions forming the neural reward circuit.
This increase in dopamine levels results in long-lasting alteration of signal transmission that is dependent on another neurotransmitter, glutamate, which causes addictive behaviours. Through a new study in mice and humans, an international team including scientists from the CNRS, INRAE, the CEA, Sorbonne University, Paris-Saclay University, the University of Bordeaux, and Université Côte d’Azur has uncovered, the molecular bases of this deleterious interplay between dopamine and glutamate.
The researchers’ findings demonstrate that the inhibition of interactions between dopamine and glutamate receptors prevents pathological behaviours provoked by cocaine in mice, without altering natural reward processing. Their findings, published in Science Advances, will help pave the way for the development of new therapeutic strategies to treat addiction, and a wider spectrum of psychiatric disorders.
A large study has found that women smoke fewer cigarettes than men but are less likely to quit.
Study author Ms Ingrid Allagbe, PhD student at the University of Burgundy, said: “In our study, women who used smoking cessation services had higher rates of overweight or obesity, depression, and anxiety compared to men and kicked the habit less often. Our findings highlight the need to provide smoking cessation interventions tailored to the needs of women.”
This study, presented at ESC Congress 2021, compared characteristics and abstinence rates of men and women visiting smoking cessation services between 2001 and 2018 in France, obtained from a nationwide database. The participants were smokers with at least one additional risk factor for cardiovascular disease: overweight/obese (body mass index [BMI] 25 kg/m² or above); high cholesterol; diabetes; high blood pressure; history of stroke, heart attack or angina.
Participants were classified as having mild, moderate, or severe nicotine dependence. Smoking abstinence (at least 28 consecutive days) was self-reported and confirmed by measurement of exhaled carbon monoxide less than 10 parts per million (ppm).
Participant height, weight, age, education level, chronic conditions, and number of cigarettes smoked each day were recorded. Participants were classified as having anxiety and depression symptoms or not according to their medical history, use of anti-anxiety medication or antidepressants, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS).
A total of 37 949 smokers were included in the study, of whom 43.5% were women. The average age of women in the study was 48 years, while the average age of men was 51 years. More women (55%) reported a bachelor’s degree level of education or higher compared to men (45%).
Both men and women had a high burden of cardiovascular risk factors. High cholesterol was more common in men (33%) than women (30%), as was high blood pressure (26% vs 23%, respectively) and diabetes (13% vs 10%, respectively).
Women were more likely (27%) to be overweight or obese compared to men (20%), and more likely (37.5%) to have symptoms of anxiety or depression than men (26.5%). Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease was more common in women (24%) compared to men (21%) as was asthma (16% vs 9%, respectively).
However, women smoked fewer cigarettes per day (23) than men (27). Severe nicotine dependence was less common, 56% of women compared to 60% of men, and abstinence was less common in women (52%) than men (55%).
Ms Allagbe said: “The findings suggest that despite smoking fewer cigarettes and being less nicotine dependent than men, women find it more difficult to quit. Possible contributors could be the higher prevalence of anxiety, depression and overweight or obesity among women. It has previously been reported that women may face different barriers to smoking cessation related to fear of weight gain, sex hormones, and mood.”
She concluded: “The results indicate that comprehensive smoking cessation programmes are needed for women that offer a multidisciplinary approach involving a psychologist, dietitian, and physical activity specialist.”
High-dose buprenorphine therapy, provided under emergency department care, is safe and well tolerated in people with opioid use disorder experiencing opioid withdrawal symptoms, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
Lower doses of buprenorphine, a medication approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat opioid use disorder, are the current standard of care. Higher doses, however, could extend the period of withdrawal relief for people after being discharged from the emergency department that could help them better seek care.
“Emergency departments are at the front lines of treating people with opioid use disorder and helping them overcome barriers to recovery such as withdrawal,” said Nora D Volkow, MD, director of NIDA. “Providing buprenorphine in emergency departments presents an opportunity to expand access to treatment, especially for underserved populations, by supplementing urgent care with a bridge to outpatient services that may ultimately improve long-term outcomes.”
Presently, some emergency departments already administer higher buprenorphine doses to treat withdrawal and opioid use disorder. They do this as a response to the growing potency in illicit opioid drug supplies and delays in access to follow-up care, but this practice has not been evaluated previously.
Researchers used a retrospective chart review to analyse data from electronic health records documenting 579 emergency department visits at the Alameda Health System Highland Hospital in California, made by 391 adults with opioid use disorder in 2018. Many patients were from vulnerable populations, with 23% experiencing homelessness and 41% having a psychiatric disorder.
In 63% of cases, clinicians administered more than the standard upper limit of 12 mg of sublingual buprenorphine during emergency department induction, and in 23% of cases, patients were given 28 mg or more. Higher doses of buprenorphine were seen to be safe and tolerable, and there were no reports of respiratory problems or drowsiness among those given the higher doses. The few serious adverse events that occurred were determined to be unrelated to high-dose buprenorphine therapy.
Studies have shown that initiating buprenorphine in emergency departments improves engagement in treatment and is cost effective, but barriers to the medication’s use in the US persist, with restrictions on what training is required, how much can be administered and for how long. Recent changes to prescribing guidelines by the US Department of Health and Human Services now let some clinicians treating up to 30 patients to prescribe buprenorphine without the previous training and services criteria.
“Once discharged, many people have difficulty linking to follow-up medical care,” explained study leader Andrew A Herring, MD, of Highland Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine. “Adjusting the timing and dosage of buprenorphine in the emergency department, along with resources and counseling aimed at facilitating the transition to outpatient services, may provide the momentum needed to access continuing care.”
“This study enhances the evidence we know about emergency-department buprenorphine induction, and could be a gamechanger, particularly for vulnerable populations who would likely benefit from a rapid induction at the time of the visit,” said study author Gail D’Onofrio, MD, of Yale University. Dr D’Onofrio published the original studies on emergency department-initiated buprenorphine, as well as recent consensus recommendations on the emergency department treatment of opioid use disorder. The researchers noted that their findings need confirmation in other emergency departments. Nevertheless, this study suggests that with proper support and training, emergency medicine providers may safely and effectively initiate high-dose buprenorphine therapy.
Unlike other population-level stressful events such as natural disasters, COVID has not resulted in a net increase in smoking, according to a new study from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Project, at the University of Waterloo.
However, the researchers also found that although nearly half of smokers reported that COVID caused them to consider quitting, the vast majority of smokers did not change their smoking habits during the early phase of the COVID pandemic.
Stress is known to be a significant risk factor for smoking, especially in females. The study surveyed 6870 smokers and vapers in Australia, Canada, England, and the United States between April and June 2020. The team investigated the association between COVID and thoughts about quitting smoking, changes in smoking, and factors related to positive changes such as attempting to quit or reducing smoking.
Only 1.1 per cent of smokers in the four countries attempted to quit and 14.2 percent reduced smoking, but this was offset by the 14.6 percent who increased smoking, with 70.2 percent reported no change.
“It is important to note that population-level stressful events, such as 9/11 and natural disasters, have often led to increased smoking,” said Geoffrey Fong, professor of psychology at Waterloo and principal investigator of the ITC Project. “So, our findings that there was no net increase in smoking in response to COVID may actually represent a positive result for public health.”
The study found that those who considered quitting smoking due to COVID were mostly females, ethnic minorities, those under financial stress, current vapers, less dependent smokers, those with greater concern about personal susceptibility of infection, and those who believed COVID is more severe for smokers.
According to study co-author Fong, this latter finding may explain why a significant uptick in smoking was seen in the COVID pandemic, compared to past tragedies.
“Unlike other population stressors such as earthquakes, which are unrelated to smoking, COVID severity is indeed linked to smoking,” Fong said. “Public health officials have mentioned the link as yet another reason for smokers to quit, and over 80 percent of smokers across the four countries believed that smoking made COVID more severe. And this led to the lack of an increase in smoking, unlike what we have seen after other tragedies.”
Journal information: Gravely, S., et al. (2021) Smokers’ cognitive and behavioural reactions during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic: Findings from the 2020 ITC Four Country Smoking and Vaping Survey. PLOS ONE. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252427.
A new study has developed a new model for examining the genetic risk for nicotine dependence.
Tobacco smoking carries undeniable health risks, and being unable to quit or moderate smoking draws out the problem. While some people may be casual smokers and can easily quit, others become heavy smokers who struggle to quit. This risk for nicotine dependence comes from a complex mix of environmental, behavioural, and genetic factors.
Twins studies indicate that 40 to 70 percent of the risk factors are heritable. Until recently, however, studies have only explained about 1 percent of the observed variation in liability to nicotine dependence, using a genetic score based on how many cigarettes a person smokes per day.
The new study led by psychologists at Emory University leveraged genome-wide association studies for a range of different traits and disorders correlated with nicotine dependence and explained 3.6 percent of the variation in nicotine dependence. The findings were reported in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
Higher polygenetic scores for a risk for schizophrenia, depression, neuroticism, self-reported risk-taking, a high body mass index, alcohol use disorder, along with more cigarettes smoked a day were all indicators of a higher risk for nicotine dependence, the researchers found. Meanwhile, the results showed that polygenetic scores associated with higher education attainment lowered the risk for nicotine dependence.
Senior author Rohan Palmer, assistant professor, Behavioral Genetics of Addiction Laboratory, Emory University explained: “If you look at the joint effect of all of these characteristics, our model accounts for nearly 4 percent of the variation in nicotine dependence, or nearly four times as much as what we learn when relying solely on a genetic index for the number of cigarettes someone smokes daily,”
“What we’re finding,” Prof Palmer added, “is that to better leverage genetic information, we need to go beyond individual human traits and disorders and think about how risk for different behaviors and traits are interrelated. This broader approach can give us a much better measure for whether someone is at risk for a mental disorder, such as nicotine dependence.”
“All of the traits and diseases we looked at are polygenic, involving multiple genes,” added first author Victoria Risner, who did the work as an Emory undergraduate majoring in neuroscience and behavioural biology. “That means that millions of genetic variants likely go into a complete picture for all of the heritable risks for nicotine dependence.”
The researchers hope that others will build on their multi-trait, polygenetic model and continue to boost the understanding of the risk for such complex disorders. “The more we learn, the closer we can get to one day having a genetic test that clinicians can use to inform their assessment of someone’s risk for nicotine dependence,” Prof Palmer said.
Though smoking hazards are well known, about 14 percent of Americans use tobacco daily. Around half a million people die each year in the US from smoking or exposure to smoke, and another 16 million have serious illnesses caused by tobacco use, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and pulmonary disease. While chemicals produced during smoking and vaping cause the health impacts, nicotine hooks people on these habits.
Risner worked on this paper for her Honours thesis. “Nicotine dependence was interesting to me because the vaping scene was just arriving while I was an undergraduate,” she says. “I saw some of my own friends who were into vaping quickly becoming dependent on it, while some others who were using the same products didn’t. I was curious about the genetic underpinnings of this difference.” Risner is now in medical school at University of North Carolina.
The work made use of genome-wide association studies for a range of traits and disorders. The researchers then sought matching variants in genetic data from a nationally representative sample of Americans with nicotine dependence. Polygenetic scores for the different traits and disorders either raised or lowered the risk for that dependence. The strongest predictors were number of cigarettes smoked per day, self-perceived risk-taking, and educational attainment.
The multi-variant, polygenetic model offers a path forward. For instance, a clearer picture of heritability for nicotine dependence, may be gained by adding more risk associations to the model (such as nicotine metabolism) and clusters of polygenic traits (such as anxiety along with neuroticism).
“As we continue to zero in on who is most at risk for becoming nicotine dependent, and what inter-related factors, whether genetic or environmental, may raise their risk, that could help determine what intervention might work best for an individual,” Prof Palmer said.
“Just a few decades ago, it was not well understood that nicotine dependence could have a genetic component,” Risner said. “Genetic studies may help reduce some of the stigma society has against substance use disorders, while also making treatment more accessible.”
Journal information: Risner, V A., et al. (2021) Multi-Polygenic Analysis of Nicotine Dependence in Individuals of European Ancestry. Nicotine & Tobacco Research. doi.org/10.1093/ntr/ntab105.
The human body needs adequate sunshine exposure to synthesise vitamin D, otherwise it must be supplied by supplements. Photo by Anders Jildén on Unsplash
Vitamin D deficiency enhances the craving for and effects of opioids, potentially worsening addiction risk, according to a new study.
These findings by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), published in Science Advances, suggest that the opioid crisis could partly be addressed by treating the common problem of vitamin D deficiency with inexpensive supplements.
In 2007, David E. Fisher, MD, PhD, director of the Mass General Cancer Center’s Melanoma Program and director of MGH’s Cutaneous Biology Research Center (CBRC) and his team found something unexpected: UVB ray exposure causes the skin to produce endorphin, which is chemically related to morphine, heroin and other opioids, which all activate the same receptors in the brain. Further research found that UV exposure raises endorphin levels in mice, which then display behaviour consistent with opioid addiction.
Endorphin induces a sense of mild euphoria. Research has suggested that some people develop urges to sunbathe and visit tanning salons that mirror the behaviours of opioid addicts. Dr Fisher and colleagues speculated that people may seek out UVB for the endorphin rush. But that suggests a major contradiction. “Why would we evolve to be behaviourally drawn towards the most common carcinogen that exists?” asked Dr Fisher.
Dr Fisher believes that the only explanation for why humans and other animals seek out the sun is that UV radiation exposure is necessary for production of vitamin D. One of vitamin D’s functions is promoting the uptake of calcium, essential for building bone. As humans migrated north during prehistoric times, they must have developed some kind of compulsion to venture outside of caves and on dark days, otherwise the vitamin D level would have debilitated them, especially the children.
This theory led Fisher and colleagues to hypothesise that sun seeking is driven by counteracting vitamin D deficiency for survival, and that vitamin D deficiency might also make the body more sensitive to the effects of opioids, potentially contributing to addiction. “Our goal in this study was to understand the relationship between vitamin D signaling in the body and UV-seeking and opioid-seeking behaviors,” says lead author Lajos V. Kemény, MD, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in Dermatology at MGH.
The researchers addressed the question from dual perspectives. One study arm compared normal laboratory mice with mice that were deficient in vitamin D (either through special breeding or by removing vitamin D from their diets). “We found that modulating vitamin D levels changes multiple addictive behaviours to both UV and opioids,” said Kemény. Importantly, when the mice were conditioned with modest doses of morphine, the vitamin D deficient mice continued seeking out the drug, more than the normal mice. Mice with low vitamin D levels were far more likely to develop morphine withdrawal symptoms.
The study also found that morphine relieved pain more effectively in mice with vitamin D deficiency – an exaggerated opioid response in these mice, and possibly concerning if it’s also true in humans, said Dr Fisher. For example, a surgery patient receiving morphine for pain control after the operation, and if they are deficient in vitamin D, the euphoric effects of morphine could be exaggerated, said Dr Fisher, “and that person is more likely to become addicted.”
This data suggesting vitamin D deficiency increases addictive behaviour was bolstered by analyses of human health records. One showed that, compared to those with normal levels, patients with modestly low vitamin D levels were 50 per cent more likely to use opioids, while patients who had severe vitamin D deficiency were 90 percent more likely. Another analysis found that patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) were more likely to be deficient in vitamin D.
Back in the lab, one of the study’s other critical findings could have significant implications, said Dr Fisher. “When we corrected vitamin D levels in the deficient mice, their opioid responses reversed and returned to normal,” he says. In humans, vitamin D deficiency is widespread, but is safely and easily treated with low-cost dietary supplements, notes Fisher. While more research is needed, he believes that treating vitamin D deficiency may be a new way to reduce the risk for OUD and bolster existing treatments for the disorder. “Our results suggest that we may have an opportunity in the public health arena to influence the opioid epidemic,” says Fisher.
An investigation by The BMJ uncovered undisclosed financial links between certain authors and the tobacco and e-cigarette industry in a number of COVID research papers, which had suggested that smokers were less likely to develop COVID.
In April 2020, two French studies (in preprint and not yet peer reviewed) suggested that nicotine might have a protective effect against COVID, which was coined the ‘nicotine hypothesis’.
The studies were reported on widely by the media, causing fears that it could undermine decades of tobacco control. What should have been an opportunity for promoting cessation of this practice which every year kills five million people around the world.
Since then, the ‘nicotine hypothesis’ has been soundly disproved, with several studies showing that, to the contrary, smoking is associated with an increased chance of COVID related death.
Journalists Stéphane Horel and Ties Keyze investigated the circumstances of these reports. They pointed out that one of the study authors, Professor Jean-Pierre Changeux, has a history of receiving funding from the Council for Tobacco Research, whose purpose was to fund research that would cast doubt on the dangers of smoking and focus on the positive effects of nicotine.
From 1995 to 1998, documents from the tobacco industry show that Changeux’s laboratory received $220,000 (£155,000; €180,000) from the Council for Tobacco Research.
When approached by The BMJ, Changeux assured them that he has not received any funding linked “directly or indirectly with the tobacco industry” since the 1990s.
In late April 2020, Greek researcher Konstantinos Farsalinos was the first to publish the ‘nicotine hypothesis’ formally in a journal, in an editorial in Toxicology Reports.
That journal’s editor in chief, Aristidis Tsatsakis was a co-author, as was A Wallace Hayes, who in 2013 had been a member of Philip Morris International’s scientific advisory board, and had served as a paid consultant to the tobacco company.
Another co-author is Konstantinos Poulas, head of the Molecular Biology and Immunology Laboratory at the University of Patras, where Farsalinos is affiliated.
The laboratory has been receiving funding from Nobacco, the market leader in Greek e-cigarettes and the exclusive distributor of British American Tobacco’s nicotine delivery systems since 2018. However, in their published scientific articles, neither Farsalinos nor Poulas had ever declared this Nobacco funding.
Yet the journalists showed that two grants were attributed in 2018 by the Foundation for a Smoke Free World—a non-profit established by tobacco company Philip Morris International in 2017—to ‘Patras Science Park’.
The grants, which according to tax documents came close to €83 000, went to NOSMOKE, a university start-up incubator headed by Poulas, which markets an ‘organic’ vaping product.
Last month, the European Respiratory Journal retracted a paper with Poulas and Farsalinos as co-authors, after two other authors failed to disclose conflicts of interest.
The retracted article had found that “current smoking was not associated with adverse outcome” in patients admitted to hospital with COVID, and it claimed that smokers had a significantly lower risk of acquiring the virus.
The foundation has invested heavily in the COVID/nicotine hypothesis, said Horel and Keyzer.
In June 2020 it set aside €900 000 for research “to better understand the associations between smoking and/or nicotine use, and COVID-19 infection and outcome.”
Its request stated that the pandemic offered “both an opportunity and a challenge for individuals to quit smoking or transition to reduced risk nicotine products.”
They concluded that, in 2021, “amid a global lung disease pandemic, tobacco industry figures are increasingly pushing the narrative of nicotine as the solution to an addiction that they themselves created, with the aim of persuading policy makers to give them ample room to market their “smoke-free” products. This makes studies on the hypothetical virtues of nicotine most welcome indeed.”
Article information: Covid 19: How harm reduction advocates and the tobacco industry capitalised on the pandemic to promote nicotine, The BMJ, DOI: 10.1136/bmj.n1303 , www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1303
For Kevin Lamb, MD, the opioid crisis became real to him in 2009.
Once, he said, he had spoken at a leadership forum on opioid abuse, about the role of hospital systems in addressing it. Thinking over what to say, he “realized there was very little I could add. The crisis is epidemic, and hospitals are ill-prepared to do anything proactive. It is that overwhelming.” But leading medical missions made him realise that the rest of the world has overwhelming needs too, which only become real once they are experienced firsthand.
Since transparency is so important, he decided to share his own story.
“This is my story of how close I came to going down that perilous path that is opioid addiction (or any addiction for that matter). I was fortunate that I stopped before I went too far down that path. Unfortunately, too many are unable to stop and continue the downward spiral toward that deep, dark pit called despair and its brother hopelessness. If this could happen to me, it could happen to anyone. If my story prevents even one of you from experiencing this, then the trepidation I feel sharing this will be worth it.”
His story began following his first back surgery in 2009 for an acutely herniated disc that occurred while leading a medical mission in Eastern Europe, which he said was the worst pain he had ever experienced, leaving him with a weak, numb right leg. Having to be carried to bed, living in very basic conditions, with no running water and power interruptions, he feared his condition would force him to be evacuated, although he was able to regain neurologic function for a short while, finishing the mission.
He went in for surgery two days after getting home. He received Oxycontin with a refill, which at the time was common practice, and it eased the pain and had a calming effect, he said. Before the trip, he had experienced a lot of stress, and now being on medical leave he enjoyed the feeling of relief that it gave.
However, as the pills started to run out, he felt embarrassed at the thought of having to request a refill, at being thought of as an addict. But after he used the last pill, withdrawal symptoms kicked in — restlessness, abdominal cramping, diarrhea. “Though relatively mild, it frightened me. I never imagined I could become physically and mentally dependent. I thought this only happened to people who were ‘weak’ or lacked ‘self-discipline’. I was wrong,” he recalled.
He said that besides “scary and humbling”, it was also “surreal… “If it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone!” he warned. The reality is that many in the medical profession are at risk, the pressures of the profession can mean that substance abuse is an easy escape with devastating consequences.
He concluded, hoping that by sharing his story he could make a difference. “My fervent desire is that it will make this crisis more personal and thus more real to you. Only then can you better know the enemy you face and how best to defeat it.”
The ‘spice’ drug, which has dangerous side effects, is becoming more popular around the world, partly due to the difficulty in detecting its presence.
Spice is the street name for one type of synthetic cannabinoids (SC), which a heterogeneous group of compounds developed to probe the endogenous cannabinoid system or as potential therapeutics. Clandestine laboratories subsequently used published data to develop SC variations marketed as abusable ‘designer drugs’. In the early 2000’s, SC became popular as ‘legal highs’, partly due to their ability to escape detection by standard cannabinoid screening tests. While they provide a similar ‘high’ to cannabis, they are seen as safer but in fact they have serious and potentially fatal side effects.
In 2019, the team developed a prototype of their spice-detecting device and found it could detect the drug from saliva and street material in under five minutes. The current test involves lab analysis of urine, with results after three to seven days.
Dr Chris Pudney from the University’s Department of Biology & Biochemistry, and creator of the new technology, said faster testing is essential if users are to receive treatment and harm-reduction interventions.
“There is no way of knowing if spice has been taken if someone presents with psychosis or intoxication symptoms that could also be due to other reasons,” said Dr Pudney. “So we see the detection technology as a way to inform care in case of overdose.”
The test’s obvious advantages have resulted in great interest, resulting in a grant which the Bath research team will use to create a simple field-usable testing solution.
Dr Pudney said: “Spice is endemic in homeless communities and prisons. It’s highly potent, addictive and poses severe health risks to users including psychosis, stroke, epileptic seizures and can kill. We want to deliver a detection system both to raise the prospect of rapid treatment and to stem the flow of drugs in these communities.”
There are also recent reports of children ‘mistaking’ spice for cannabis, resulting in numerous hospital admissions.
“Drug testing and checking, which is increasing in many countries around the world and in the UK, has been shown to have an impact on drug-taking behaviour and to potentially reduce risk,” said Dr Jenny Scott from the University’s Department of Pharmacy & Pharmacology and who is also involved in the research.
“Spice use is a particular issue in homeless communities. In the future, we hope our technology can be used to offer drug testing to spice users and to tailor harm-reduction information to these vulnerable people. The machines could be used in drugs services, homeless hostels and further down the line, in pharmacies.”
The new spice-testing technology will be based on a cloud-hosted data analytics platform.
“We hope to combine this technology with a deeper understanding of the communities that use spice so that we can deploy the spice-detecting technology in the most effective way possible to benefit the most vulnerable in society,” said Dr Pudney. “Our ultimate aim is to save both money and lives.”
By the end of the grant period, the group aims to start a not-for-profit social enterprise to bring their technology to the mainstream. The group plans to roll out the full range of activities needed to deliver the technology, including portable device design, analytical software development, chemical fingerprint libraries and the associated community pharmacy practice advice to deploy the technology effectively.
“We believe the scope and potential of our research is truly unique and presents the best chance for tackling spice use in the UK and more widely,” said Dr Chris Pudney.
A team of researchers in the US and Denmark has found that if people suffering from alcohol withdrawal go on a ketogenic (keto) diet the severity of their symptoms will be reduced.
Alcoholics who stop drinking experience withdrawal symptoms of varying severity. Since the alcohol withdrawal symptoms are so unpleasant, many people seek assistance, such as checking into rehab. In this new effort, the researchers have found a new tool to help with withdrawal symptoms and which could possibly reduce the rate of recidivism.
The research was motivated by two observations. The first being that prior studies have shown that in long term alcohol dependency, people’s bodies begin to use alcohol-metabolised acetate for energy, and less glucose. The lack of acetate is associated with alcohol withdrawal symptoms. The second is that on a keto diet, the body has more ketone bodies to metabolise for use as an energy source. Taken together, it suggested that people on keto diets could substitute the acetate as an energy source and minimise withdrawal symptoms.
A ketogenic diet is high-fat, moderate-protein and very-low-carbohydrate. The ratio of these macronutrients are approximately 55% to 60% fat, 30% to 35% protein and 5% to 10% carbohydrates. In a 2000 kcal per day diet, carbohydrates amount up to 20 to 50 g per day.
To test the theory, the study recruited 46 participants newly hospitalised alcoholics, half went on the keto diet and the other half went in a control group. The researchers measured ketone and acetate levels in the volunteers once a week, and also looked for inflammation markers that are common in people in rehab and assessed the amount of medication the participants needed to ease their symptoms. Taken together, the data suggested that the keto diet reduced withdrawal symptoms in the volunteers. When the researchers conducted a similar experiment with test rats, they observed that the rats on the diet drank less alcohol than control rats.
The researchers said that their results are encouraging, but note that additional research is necessary, particularly with outpatient volunteers.
Journal information: Corinde E. Wiers et al. Ketogenic diet reduces alcohol withdrawal symptoms in humans and alcohol intake in rodents, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf6780
