STUDY UNCOVERS METHOD TO TREAT COCAINE ABUSE

Washington, Sept. 2: According to a study, bile acids — which are critical for digestion and absorption of fats and fat- soluble vitamins in the small intestine — could reduce the desire for cocaine. Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggest that targeting bile acid signaling in the brain may be a novel way to treat cocaine abuse.

Vanderbilt investigators Charles ( Robb) Flynn, and Naji Abumrad, John L. Sawyers Professor of Surgical Sciences, have long studied the metabolic changes associated with bariatric surgery for weight loss.

“Surgical patients experience dramatic changes in glucose regulation and in taste preferences and food cravings while they are still in the recovery room,” Flynn said.

“These surgeries are doing something more than we understand. We wondered if elevated serum bile acids, a hallmark of bariatric surgery, were affecting the reward centers of the brain to blunt the pleasure of eating high- fat foods,” he said.

If the surgery did affect the brain's reward centers, he added, “How might it impact the rewarding properties of drugs of abuse?”

The most commonly performed bariatric surgery — Roux- en- Y gastric bypass — restricts the size of the stomach and alters the path of food through the digestive tract. It also changes the point where bile acids enter the small intestine, from the usual upper part of the small intestine to a site near the end. The change increases circulating levels of bile acids in the body. — ANI