Pills could be the cure for addiction. Image via epSos/Flickr
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The 11 meth addicts were housed in a lockdown facility for three weeks where they were intravenously treated with meth two to three times a week while simultaneously taking Ibudilast. Dr. Aimee Swanson, co-investigator on the trial and research director at the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine, said, "very preliminary results would indicate that Ibudilast may dampen craving and improve cognitive functioning.”Though there are some pharmaceuticals used in the treatment of opioid addiction—mostly replacement therapies like methadone and buprenorphine, or opioid blockers like naltrexone—there’s not been a true drug treatment therapy for amphetamine addiction.Though there are some pharmaceuticals used in the treatment of opioid addiction, there’s not been a true drug treatment therapy for amphetamine addiction.
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In a fantastic 2007 meta study on glial impact on pain and the effects of painkillers, researchers posit that we’ve been approaching pain management from a faulty and simplistic conception of how pain is conveyed in the brain: “Owing to the pain transmission capacity of neurons, these cells have been the primary intentional target of all pharmacotherapies developed to date.”Sure, neurons physically conduct the pain transmission, but research into glial cells is showing their importance in mediating the signals. They conclude, “The pharmacological targeting of glia, rather than solely neurons, will be shown to be a novel and as yet clinically unexploited approach for potentially achieving both effective pain control and enhanced efficacy of opioids.” It’s a drastic shift in how we conceptualize the brain’s response to pain—integrating another layer in to the complexity of how neurons respond to pain stimuli—that is necessary to more fully describe what’s actually going on.It’s amazing to consider that an entire class of cells, once thought to simply function as the glue that held together the all-important neurons, could function in such important ways. If attenuation of glial cells can have such an important effect on addiction response, craving, and pain management (and we’ve only really scratched the surface in terms of researching the role they play), then entire classes of drugs that act on these cells could be developed to treat a host of afflictions.Neurobiology can be deceptively complex. It can seem like we know so much about the workings of the brain—the neurotransmitters and drugs commonly used to alter them—that we have a firm grasp on what is happening. But there's so much going on, so many interactions combining and building off of one another to produce our experience of the world, that we're just at the very beginning of understanding it all.@kellybourdetIt’s amazing to consider that an entire class of cells, once thought to simply function as the glue that held together the all-important neurons, could function in such important ways.