Medindia LOGIN REGISTER
Medindia

Opioid Use Alters Genes Of Brain

by Karishma Abhishek on Aug 13 2021 5:06 PM

Genes in the brains of people with opioid use disorder (OUD) are expressed differently and are found to be associated with neuroinflammatory changes.

Opioid Use Alters Genes Of Brain
Millions of people are affected worldwide by the epidemic of opioid abuse. But the molecular changes caused by opioids in the human brain are not known much.
It is found that genes in the brains of people with opioid use disorder (OUD) are expressed differently when compared to those not using opioids as per a study in the Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier.

“These changes may explain not only the addictive properties of opioids but what ultimately causes harm to the brain and the person suffering from opioid use disorder. These gaps in our understanding of opioids’ actions in the brain limit our ability to develop more effective therapies. To address this, we employed new methods to identify novel molecular players directly in the brains of people who struggled with opioid use disorder,” says Dr. Ryan Logan, Ph.D., an Associate Professor at Boston University’s School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA and senior author of the study.

Gene Pattern and Opioid Use

The study team analyzed the autopsy brain tissue from 20 subjects with OUD and chronic opioid use and 20 without a history of opioid use. Using RNA sequencing (RNAseq), they were able to identify different patterns of gene expression.

RNAseq of two of the brain areas strongly associated with addiction pathophysiology – the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens, showed that affected genes were divided into 2 groups where one group encoded for proinflammatory immune molecules and other were involved in remodeling of the extracellular matrix in people with OUD.

This suggests that connections between neurons may have been altered by opioid use along with higher levels of the microglia (brain’s resident immune cells) in OUD brains.

Advertisement
“We discovered several important molecular pathways that are integral in mediating the consequences of chronic opioid use on the brain. These molecules are responsible for shaping and maintaining the local environment required for neurons to function properly, as well as molecules critical for local inflammation that may impact the brain’s response to opioids. Together, these players represent new targets in both the pathology and treatment of opioid use disorder,” says, Dr. Logan.

The study thereby highlights that opioid dependency is associated with neuroinflammatory changes apart from changes in markers of neural response and plasticity in the brain.

Advertisement
Source-Medindia


Advertisement

Home

Consult

e-Book

Articles

News

Calculators

Drugs

Directories

Education

Consumer

Professional