FLICKR, JEAN-ETIENNE MINH-DUY POIRRIERTreating cocaine addicts is challenging because they are frequently at risk for relapse elicited by cues connected with the drug, like spending time with other users or in places where they previously used cocaine. Like humans, when cocaine-addicted rats go through withdrawal, drug cravings in response to cocaine-associated cues intensify, or incubate. Now, by positively modulating the function of a type of glutamate receptor in the brain, Marina Wolf, Kuei Tseng, and colleagues from Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in North Chicago, Illinois, have used a drug targeting this receptor to decrease cue-induced cocaine cravings in addicted rats. Their work was published today (November 24) in Nature Neuroscience.
Wolf and Tseng’s group previously showed that the rise in cue-induced cravings in cocaine-addicted rats is based upon the increase of a rare type of glutamate receptor—Ca2+-permeable AMPA receptors (CP-AMPARs)—in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) area of the brain. They also previously demonstrated that increasing the function of another type of glutamate receptor—metabotropic glutamate receptor 1 (mGluR1)—can remove CP-AMPARs from synapses in the NAcc, which is consistent with its role in other brain regions, as shown by other groups. Their current findings add to mounting evidence that mGluR1 acts to decrease CP-AMPAR activity and drug-seeking behavior.
This newest study is “very thorough, and it certainly links mGluRs to a specific behavior in a model for addiction,” said Christian Lüscher, a professor in neuroscience and neurology at ...
